The mathematician Norbert Wiener, the “originator of cybernetics” was born on 26 November 1894 in Columbia, Missouri State. He was a child prodigy who could read and write at the age of three, and was awarded a degree in mathematics by Tufts College at the age of fifteen. He studied zoology for a year, then went on to study philosophy. In 1913 Harvard awarded him PhD degree for a dissertation on mathematical logic. Soon he met Bertrand Russell in England, then he worked together with David Hilbert in G?ttingen.
Later he worked on the Brownian motion, the continuous random motion of particles suspended in a fluid or gas, which is also discussed in chaos theory. During World War II he was occupied with mathematical problems of anti-aircraft systems (for instance predicting the movement of enemy aircraft on the basis of radar images). He developed statistical methods for control and communication, and this how he arrived at formulating the concept of cybernetics.
He defined five criteria for modern computers in 1940: numerical arithmetic unit (1), automatic (without human assistance) execution of operations (2), data storing, easy retrieving and deleting of data (3), binary number system (4), vacuum tubes replacing mechanical or electrical switches (5).
Laying the scientific foundations of cybernetics in the 1940s, Wiener was the first (along with Alan Turing and John von Neumann) to study similarities in the functioning of human intelligence and machines. Through analyses of brain waves, Wiener found analogies between the human brain and computers capable of making memory-based associations, choices and decisions. He defined cybernetics itself as “control and communication in the animal and the machine”. His book of great influence entitled Cybernetics was published in 1948.
His name is also linked with feedback theory, which can be illustrated by the thermostat. The thermostat controls the temperature in an environment, compares the actual temperature to the desired temperature set, and responds. All forms of intelligent behaviour are the results of feedback mechanisms, which can be simulated by machines.
After World War II he contributed to various fields in science in the 1950s. Wiener died in Stockholm on 18 March 1964.