https://www.glossalab.org/w/api.php?action=feedcontributions&feedformat=atom&user=DavidglossaLAB - User contributions [en]2026-04-30T20:49:17ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.43.6https://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=31915Draft:Norbert Wiener2026-02-07T13:07:58Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Created from clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:In review<br />
}}<br />
== Abstract ==<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like probability theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906).<ref name=":0">IRVING EZRA SEGAL, "Norbert Wiener", 1992 https://www.nasonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/wiener-norbert.pdf</ref><ref name=":1">J J O'Connor and E F Robertson, "Norbert Wiener", 2003 https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Wiener_Norbert/</ref> <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead.<ref name=":0" /><ref>Bernard Golden, "Leo Wiener (1862-1939)", 2018 https://bulteno.esperanto-usa.org/a/1980/08/50-wiener/ </ref><ref name=":2">Joseph Lebovich and Cyrus Adler, "Wiener, Leo" https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14901-wiener-leo</ref> <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" /> <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5">National Science & Technology Medals Foundation, "Norbert Wiener" https://nationalmedals.org/laureate/norbert-wiener/</ref> <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3">J. A. N. Lee, "Norbert Wiener", 2013 https://history.computer.org/pioneers/wiener.html</ref> <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father Leo, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would proof to be useful later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5" /><br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York in 1910. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912 at the age of 17. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4">Britannica Editors. "Norbert Wiener". ''Encyclopedia Britannica'', 22 Nov. 2025 https://www.britannica.com/biography/Norbert-Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life and scientific career was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3" /> <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge in 1919 due to a recommendation by William Fogg Osgood. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in the renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy.<ref name=":0" /><ref>Paul Feigelfeld, "K.I.-nesische Spuren", 2020 [https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen. "https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen.]</ref><ref>Chen Guanrong, "Wiener, the Child Prodigy of the Past and a Mathematician", 2022<br />
<br />
https://www.eea.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/info/1041/2723.htm</ref> <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]].<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener did not intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":4" /><br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as its own scientific field. The name [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /><ref>[[User:JDíaz|José María Díaz Nafría]], "Cybernetics", 2010 <br />
<br />
[[gB:Cybernetics]]</ref><br />
<br />
Although the idea itself was not groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<ref name=":0" /><br />
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In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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In 1964 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<ref>USGS, "MOON - Wiener", 2010 <br />
<br />
https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/6544</ref><br />
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Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<ref name=":0" /><br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<ref>Society for Industrial and Aüülied Mathematics, "AMS-SIAM Norbert Wiener" <br />
<br />
https://www.siam.org/programs-initiatives/prizes-awards/joint-prizes/ams-siam-norbert-wiener-prize/</ref><br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<ref name=":0" /><ref>Mary Jane McCavitt "Guide to the Papers of Norbert Wiener", 1980 https://archivesspace.mit.edu/repositories/2/resources/600</ref><br />
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'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
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'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
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'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
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'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
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'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
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'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
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'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
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'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
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'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
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'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references /><br />
<br />
== Figure Sources ==<br />
[https://loff.it/society/efemerides/norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-216189/ Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]<br />
<br />
[https://omeka-mitlibraries.s3.amazonaws.com/original/5fc9bd7e5cb6fab9e0edad83f22751cc4e0e4562.jpeg Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=31914Draft:Norbert Wiener2026-02-07T12:57:33Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Created from clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:In review<br />
}}<br />
== Abstract ==<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like probability theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906).<ref name=":0">IRVING EZRA SEGAL, "Norbert Wiener", 1992 https://www.nasonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/wiener-norbert.pdf</ref><ref name=":1">J J O'Connor and E F Robertson, "Norbert Wiener", 2003 https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Wiener_Norbert/</ref> <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead.<ref name=":0" /><ref>Bernard Golden, "Leo Wiener (1862-1939)", 2018 https://bulteno.esperanto-usa.org/a/1980/08/50-wiener/ </ref><ref name=":2">Joseph Lebovich and Cyrus Adler, "Wiener, Leo" https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14901-wiener-leo</ref> <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" /> <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5">National Science & Technology Medals Foundation, "Norbert Wiener" https://nationalmedals.org/laureate/norbert-wiener/</ref> <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3">J. A. N. Lee, "Norbert Wiener", 2013 https://history.computer.org/pioneers/wiener.html</ref> <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father Leo, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would proof to be useful later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":6">https://austria-forum.org/af/AustriaWiki/Norbert_Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York in 1910. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912 at the age of 17. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4">Britannica Editors. "Norbert Wiener". ''Encyclopedia Britannica'', 22 Nov. 2025 https://www.britannica.com/biography/Norbert-Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life and scientific career was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3" /> <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge in 1919 due to a recommendation by William Fogg Osgood. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":6" /> <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in the renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy.<ref name=":0" /><ref>Paul Feigelfeld, "K.I.-nesische Spuren", 2020 [https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen. "https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen.]</ref><ref>Chen Guanrong, "Wiener, the Child Prodigy of the Past and a Mathematician", 2022<br />
<br />
https://www.eea.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/info/1041/2723.htm</ref> <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]].<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener did not intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":4" /><br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as its own scientific field. The name [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /><ref>[[User:JDíaz|José María Díaz Nafría]], "Cybernetics", 2010 <br />
<br />
[[gB:Cybernetics]]</ref><br />
<br />
Although the idea itself was not groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1964 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<ref>USGS, "MOON - Wiener", 2010 <br />
<br />
https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/6544</ref><br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<ref name=":0" /><br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<ref>Society for Industrial and Aüülied Mathematics, "AMS-SIAM Norbert Wiener" <br />
<br />
https://www.siam.org/programs-initiatives/prizes-awards/joint-prizes/ams-siam-norbert-wiener-prize/</ref><br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<ref name=":0" /><ref>Mary Jane McCavitt "Guide to the Papers of Norbert Wiener", 1980 https://archivesspace.mit.edu/repositories/2/resources/600</ref><br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references /><br />
<br />
== Figure Sources ==<br />
[https://loff.it/society/efemerides/norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-216189/ Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]<br />
<br />
[https://omeka-mitlibraries.s3.amazonaws.com/original/5fc9bd7e5cb6fab9e0edad83f22751cc4e0e4562.jpeg Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=31913Draft:Norbert Wiener2026-02-07T12:53:19Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Created from clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:In review<br />
}}<br />
== Abstract ==<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like probability theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906).<ref name=":0">IRVING EZRA SEGAL, "Norbert Wiener", 1992 https://www.nasonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/wiener-norbert.pdf</ref><ref name=":1">J J O'Connor and E F Robertson, "Norbert Wiener", 2003 https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Wiener_Norbert/</ref> <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead.<ref name=":0" /><ref>Bernard Golden, "Leo Wiener (1862-1939)", 2018 https://bulteno.esperanto-usa.org/a/1980/08/50-wiener/ </ref><ref name=":2">Joseph Lebovich and Cyrus Adler, "Wiener, Leo" https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14901-wiener-leo</ref> <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" /> <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5">National Science & Technology Medals Foundation, "Norbert Wiener" https://nationalmedals.org/laureate/norbert-wiener/</ref> <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3">J. A. N. Lee, "Norbert Wiener", 2013 https://history.computer.org/pioneers/wiener.html</ref> <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father Leo, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would proof to be useful later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":6">https://austria-forum.org/af/AustriaWiki/Norbert_Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York in 1910. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912 at the age of 17. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4">Britannica Editors. "Norbert Wiener". ''Encyclopedia Britannica'', 22 Nov. 2025 https://www.britannica.com/biography/Norbert-Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life and scientific career was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3" /> <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge in 1919 due to a recommendation by William Fogg Osgood. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":6" /> <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in the renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy.<ref name=":0" /><ref>Paul Feigelfeld, "K.I.-nesische Spuren", 2020 [https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen. "https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen.]</ref><ref>Chen Guanrong, "Wiener, the Child Prodigy of the Past and a Mathematician", 2022<br />
<br />
https://www.eea.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/info/1041/2723.htm</ref> <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]].<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener did not intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":4" /><br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as its own scientific field. The name [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /><ref>[[User:JDíaz|José María Díaz Nafría]], "Cybernetics", 2010 <br />
<br />
[[gB:Cybernetics]]</ref><br />
<br />
Although the idea itself was not groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1964 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<ref>https://www.nationalbook.org/books/god-and-golem-inc-a-comment-on-certain-points-where-cybernetics-impinges-on-religion/</ref><br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<ref>USGS, "MOON - Wiener", 2010 <br />
<br />
https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/6544</ref><br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<ref name=":0" /><br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<ref>Society for Industrial and Aüülied Mathematics, "AMS-SIAM Norbert Wiener" <br />
<br />
https://www.siam.org/programs-initiatives/prizes-awards/joint-prizes/ams-siam-norbert-wiener-prize/</ref><br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<ref name=":0" /><ref>Mary Jane McCavitt "Guide to the Papers of Norbert Wiener", 1980 https://archivesspace.mit.edu/repositories/2/resources/600</ref><br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references /><br />
<br />
== Figure Sources ==<br />
[https://loff.it/society/efemerides/norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-216189/ Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]<br />
<br />
[https://omeka-mitlibraries.s3.amazonaws.com/original/5fc9bd7e5cb6fab9e0edad83f22751cc4e0e4562.jpeg Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=31912Draft:Norbert Wiener2026-02-07T12:46:40Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Created from clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:In review<br />
}}<br />
== Abstract ==<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like probability theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906).<ref name=":0">IRVING EZRA SEGAL, "Norbert Wiener", 1992 https://www.nasonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/wiener-norbert.pdf</ref><ref name=":1">J J O'Connor and E F Robertson, "Norbert Wiener", 2003 https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Wiener_Norbert/</ref> <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead.<ref name=":0" /><ref>Bernard Golden, "Leo Wiener (1862-1939)", 2018 https://bulteno.esperanto-usa.org/a/1980/08/50-wiener/ </ref><ref name=":2">Joseph Lebovich and Cyrus Adler, "Wiener, Leo" https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14901-wiener-leo</ref><ref>https://www.jewage.org/wiki/en/Article:Leo_Wiener_-_Biography</ref> <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" /> <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5">National Science & Technology Medals Foundation, "Norbert Wiener" https://nationalmedals.org/laureate/norbert-wiener/</ref> <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3">J. A. N. Lee, "Norbert Wiener", 2013 https://history.computer.org/pioneers/wiener.html</ref> <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father Leo, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would proof to be useful later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":6">https://austria-forum.org/af/AustriaWiki/Norbert_Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York in 1910. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912 at the age of 17. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4">Britannica Editors. "Norbert Wiener". ''Encyclopedia Britannica'', 22 Nov. 2025 https://www.britannica.com/biography/Norbert-Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life and scientific career was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3" /> <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge in 1919 due to a recommendation by William Fogg Osgood. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":6" /> <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in the renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy.<ref name=":0" /><ref>Paul Feigelfeld, "K.I.-nesische Spuren", 2020 [https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen. "https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen.]</ref><ref>Chen Guanrong, "Wiener, the Child Prodigy of the Past and a Mathematician", 2022<br />
<br />
https://www.eea.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/info/1041/2723.htm</ref> <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]].<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener did not intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":4" /><br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as its own scientific field. The name [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /><ref>[[User:JDíaz|José María Díaz Nafría]], "Cybernetics", 2010 <br />
<br />
[[gB:Cybernetics]]</ref><br />
<br />
Although the idea itself was not groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1964 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<ref>https://www.nationalbook.org/books/god-and-golem-inc-a-comment-on-certain-points-where-cybernetics-impinges-on-religion/</ref><br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<ref>USGS, "MOON - Wiener", 2010 <br />
<br />
https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/6544</ref><br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<ref name=":0" /><br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<ref>Society for Industrial and Aüülied Mathematics, "AMS-SIAM Norbert Wiener" <br />
<br />
https://www.siam.org/programs-initiatives/prizes-awards/joint-prizes/ams-siam-norbert-wiener-prize/</ref><br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<ref name=":0" /><ref>Mary Jane McCavitt "Guide to the Papers of Norbert Wiener", 1980 https://archivesspace.mit.edu/repositories/2/resources/600</ref><br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references /><br />
<br />
== Figure Sources ==<br />
[https://loff.it/society/efemerides/norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-216189/ Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]<br />
<br />
[https://omeka-mitlibraries.s3.amazonaws.com/original/5fc9bd7e5cb6fab9e0edad83f22751cc4e0e4562.jpeg Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=31911Draft:Norbert Wiener2026-02-07T12:16:14Z<p>David: /* References */</p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Created from clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:In review<br />
}}<br />
== Abstract ==<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like probability theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906).<ref name=":0">IRVING EZRA SEGAL, "Norbert Wiener", 1992 https://www.nasonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/wiener-norbert.pdf</ref><ref name=":1">https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Wiener_Norbert/</ref> <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead.<ref name=":0" /><ref>https://bulteno.esperanto-usa.org/a/1980/08/50-wiener/</ref><ref name=":2">https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14901-wiener-leo</ref><ref>https://www.jewage.org/wiki/en/Article:Leo_Wiener_-_Biography</ref> <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" /> <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5">https://nationalmedals.org/laureate/norbert-wiener/</ref> <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3">https://history.computer.org/pioneers/wiener.html</ref> <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father Leo, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would proof to be useful later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":6">https://austria-forum.org/af/AustriaWiki/Norbert_Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York in 1910. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912 at the age of 17. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4">https://www.britannica.com/biography/Norbert-Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life and scientific career was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3" /> <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge in 1919 due to a recommendation by William Fogg Osgood. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":6" /> <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in the renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy.<ref name=":0" /><ref>[https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen. https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen.]</ref><ref>https://www.eea.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/info/1041/2723.htm</ref> <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]].<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener did not intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":4" /><br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as its own scientific field. The name [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /><ref>[[gB:Cybernetics]]</ref><br />
<br />
Although the idea itself was not groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1964 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<ref>https://www.nationalbook.org/books/god-and-golem-inc-a-comment-on-certain-points-where-cybernetics-impinges-on-religion/</ref><br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<ref>https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/6544</ref><br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<ref name=":0" /><br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<ref>https://www.siam.org/programs-initiatives/prizes-awards/joint-prizes/ams-siam-norbert-wiener-prize/</ref><br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<ref name=":0" /><ref>https://archivesspace.mit.edu/repositories/2/resources/600</ref><br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references /><br />
<br />
== Figure Sources ==<br />
[https://loff.it/society/efemerides/norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-216189/ Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]<br />
<br />
[https://omeka-mitlibraries.s3.amazonaws.com/original/5fc9bd7e5cb6fab9e0edad83f22751cc4e0e4562.jpeg Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=30764Draft:Norbert Wiener2026-01-09T08:11:28Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:In review<br />
}}<br />
== Abstract ==<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like probability theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906).<ref name=":0">https://www.nasonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/wiener-norbert.pdf</ref><ref name=":1">https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Wiener_Norbert/</ref> <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead.<ref name=":0" /><ref>https://bulteno.esperanto-usa.org/a/1980/08/50-wiener/</ref><ref name=":2">https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14901-wiener-leo</ref><ref>https://www.jewage.org/wiki/en/Article:Leo_Wiener_-_Biography</ref> <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" /> <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5">https://nationalmedals.org/laureate/norbert-wiener/</ref> <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3">https://history.computer.org/pioneers/wiener.html</ref> <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father Leo, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would proof to be useful later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":6">https://austria-forum.org/af/AustriaWiki/Norbert_Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York in 1910. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912 at the age of 17. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4">https://www.britannica.com/biography/Norbert-Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life and scientific career was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3" /> <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge in 1919 due to a recommendation by William Fogg Osgood. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":6" /> <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in the renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy.<ref name=":0" /><ref>[https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen. https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen.]</ref><ref>https://www.eea.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/info/1041/2723.htm</ref> <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]].<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener did not intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":4" /><br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as its own scientific field. The name [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /><ref>[[gB:Cybernetics]]</ref><br />
<br />
Although the idea itself was not groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1964 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<ref>https://www.nationalbook.org/books/god-and-golem-inc-a-comment-on-certain-points-where-cybernetics-impinges-on-religion/</ref><br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<ref>https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/6544</ref><br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<ref name=":0" /><br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<ref>https://www.siam.org/programs-initiatives/prizes-awards/joint-prizes/ams-siam-norbert-wiener-prize/</ref><br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<ref name=":0" /><ref>https://archivesspace.mit.edu/repositories/2/resources/600</ref><br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references /><br />
<br />
== Figure Sources ==<br />
[https://loff.it/society/efemerides/norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-216189/ Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]<br />
<br />
[https://omeka-mitlibraries.s3.amazonaws.com/original/5fc9bd7e5cb6fab9e0edad83f22751cc4e0e4562.jpeg Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=30761Draft:Norbert Wiener2026-01-08T17:27:14Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
== Abstract ==<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like probability theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906).<ref name=":0">https://www.nasonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/wiener-norbert.pdf</ref><ref name=":1">https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Wiener_Norbert/</ref> <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead.<ref name=":0" /><ref>https://bulteno.esperanto-usa.org/a/1980/08/50-wiener/</ref><ref name=":2">https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14901-wiener-leo</ref><ref>https://www.jewage.org/wiki/en/Article:Leo_Wiener_-_Biography</ref> <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" /> <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5">https://nationalmedals.org/laureate/norbert-wiener/</ref> <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3">https://history.computer.org/pioneers/wiener.html</ref> <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father Leo, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would proof to be useful later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":6">https://austria-forum.org/af/AustriaWiki/Norbert_Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York in 1910. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912 at the age of 17. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4">https://www.britannica.com/biography/Norbert-Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life and scientific career was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3" /> <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge in 1919 due to a recommendation by William Fogg Osgood. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":6" /> <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in the renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy.<ref name=":0" /><ref>[https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen. https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen.]</ref><ref>https://www.eea.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/info/1041/2723.htm</ref> <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]].<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener did not intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":4" /><br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as its own scientific field. The name [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /><ref>[[gB:Cybernetics]]</ref><br />
<br />
Although the idea itself was not groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1964 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<ref>https://www.nationalbook.org/books/god-and-golem-inc-a-comment-on-certain-points-where-cybernetics-impinges-on-religion/</ref><br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<ref>https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/6544</ref><br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<ref name=":0" /><br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<ref>https://www.siam.org/programs-initiatives/prizes-awards/joint-prizes/ams-siam-norbert-wiener-prize/</ref><br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<ref name=":0" /><ref>https://archivesspace.mit.edu/repositories/2/resources/600</ref><br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references /><br />
<br />
== Figure Sources ==<br />
[https://loff.it/society/efemerides/norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-216189/ Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]<br />
<br />
[https://omeka-mitlibraries.s3.amazonaws.com/original/5fc9bd7e5cb6fab9e0edad83f22751cc4e0e4562.jpeg Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29366Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T12:15:10Z<p>David: /* Career */</p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
== Abstract ==<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like probability theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906).<ref name=":0">https://www.nasonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/wiener-norbert.pdf</ref><ref name=":1">https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Wiener_Norbert/</ref> <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead.<ref name=":0" /><ref>https://bulteno.esperanto-usa.org/a/1980/08/50-wiener/</ref><ref name=":2">https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14901-wiener-leo</ref><ref>https://www.jewage.org/wiki/en/Article:Leo_Wiener_-_Biography</ref> <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" /> <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5">https://nationalmedals.org/laureate/norbert-wiener/</ref> <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3">https://history.computer.org/pioneers/wiener.html</ref> <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father Leo, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would proof to be useful later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":6">https://austria-forum.org/af/AustriaWiki/Norbert_Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York in 1910. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912 at the age of 17. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4">https://www.britannica.com/biography/Norbert-Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life and scientific career was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3" /> <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge in 1919 due to a recommendation by William Fogg Osgood. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":6" /> <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in the renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy.<ref name=":0" /><ref>[https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen. https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen.]</ref><ref>https://www.eea.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/info/1041/2723.htm</ref> <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]].<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener did not intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":4" /><br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as its own scientific field. The name [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /><ref>[[gB:Cybernetics]]</ref><br />
<br />
Although the idea itself was not groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1964 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<ref>https://www.nationalbook.org/books/god-and-golem-inc-a-comment-on-certain-points-where-cybernetics-impinges-on-religion/</ref><br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<ref>https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/6544</ref><br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<ref name=":0" /><br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<ref>https://www.siam.org/programs-initiatives/prizes-awards/joint-prizes/ams-siam-norbert-wiener-prize/</ref><br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<ref name=":0" /><ref>https://archivesspace.mit.edu/repositories/2/resources/600</ref><br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references /><br />
<br />
== Figure Sources ==<br />
[https://loff.it/society/efemerides/norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-216189/ Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]<br />
<br />
[https://omeka-mitlibraries.s3.amazonaws.com/original/5fc9bd7e5cb6fab9e0edad83f22751cc4e0e4562.jpeg Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29364Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T12:13:58Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
== Abstract ==<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like probability theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906).<ref name=":0">https://www.nasonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/wiener-norbert.pdf</ref><ref name=":1">https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Wiener_Norbert/</ref> <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead.<ref name=":0" /><ref>https://bulteno.esperanto-usa.org/a/1980/08/50-wiener/</ref><ref name=":2">https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14901-wiener-leo</ref><ref>https://www.jewage.org/wiki/en/Article:Leo_Wiener_-_Biography</ref> <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" /> <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5">https://nationalmedals.org/laureate/norbert-wiener/</ref> <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3">https://history.computer.org/pioneers/wiener.html</ref> <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father Leo, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would proof to be useful later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":6">https://austria-forum.org/af/AustriaWiki/Norbert_Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York in 1910. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912 at the age of 17. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4">https://www.britannica.com/biography/Norbert-Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life and scientific career was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3" /> <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge in 1919 due to a recommenadtion by William Fogg Osgood. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":6" /> <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in the renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy.<ref name=":0" /><ref>[https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen. https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen.]</ref><ref>https://www.eea.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/info/1041/2723.htm</ref> <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]].<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener did not intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":4" /><br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as its own scientific field. The name [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /><ref>[[gB:Cybernetics]]</ref><br />
<br />
Although the idea itself was not groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1964 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<ref>https://www.nationalbook.org/books/god-and-golem-inc-a-comment-on-certain-points-where-cybernetics-impinges-on-religion/</ref><br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<ref>https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/6544</ref><br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<ref name=":0" /><br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<ref>https://www.siam.org/programs-initiatives/prizes-awards/joint-prizes/ams-siam-norbert-wiener-prize/</ref><br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<ref name=":0" /><ref>https://archivesspace.mit.edu/repositories/2/resources/600</ref><br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references /><br />
<br />
== Figure Sources ==<br />
[https://loff.it/society/efemerides/norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-216189/ Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]<br />
<br />
[https://omeka-mitlibraries.s3.amazonaws.com/original/5fc9bd7e5cb6fab9e0edad83f22751cc4e0e4562.jpeg Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29362Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T12:08:58Z<p>David: /* Selection of publications made by Wiener */</p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
== Abstract ==<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like probability theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906).<ref name=":0">https://www.nasonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/wiener-norbert.pdf</ref><ref name=":1">https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Wiener_Norbert/</ref> <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead.<ref name=":0" /><ref>https://bulteno.esperanto-usa.org/a/1980/08/50-wiener/</ref><ref name=":2">https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14901-wiener-leo</ref><ref>https://www.jewage.org/wiki/en/Article:Leo_Wiener_-_Biography</ref> <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" /> <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5">https://nationalmedals.org/laureate/norbert-wiener/</ref> <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3">https://history.computer.org/pioneers/wiener.html</ref> <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father Leo, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would proof to be useful later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":6">https://austria-forum.org/af/AustriaWiki/Norbert_Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York in 1910. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912 at the age of 17. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4">https://www.britannica.com/biography/Norbert-Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life and scientific career was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3" /> <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge in 1919 due to a recommenadtion by William Fogg Osgood. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":6" /> <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in the renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy.<ref name=":0" /><ref>[https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen. https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen.]</ref><ref>https://www.eea.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/info/1041/2723.htm</ref> <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]].<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener did not intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":4" /><br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as its own scientific field. The name [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /><ref>[[gB:Cybernetics]]</ref><br />
<br />
Although the idea itself was not groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1964 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<ref>https://www.nationalbook.org/books/god-and-golem-inc-a-comment-on-certain-points-where-cybernetics-impinges-on-religion/</ref><br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<ref>https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/6544</ref><br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<ref name=":0" /><br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<ref>https://www.siam.org/programs-initiatives/prizes-awards/joint-prizes/ams-siam-norbert-wiener-prize/</ref><br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<ref name=":0" /><ref>https://archivesspace.mit.edu/repositories/2/resources/600</ref><br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references /><br />
<br />
== Figure Sources ==</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29360Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T11:57:21Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
== Abstract ==<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like probability theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906).<ref name=":0">https://www.nasonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/wiener-norbert.pdf</ref><ref name=":1">https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Wiener_Norbert/</ref> <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead.<ref name=":0" /><ref>https://bulteno.esperanto-usa.org/a/1980/08/50-wiener/</ref><ref name=":2">https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14901-wiener-leo</ref><ref>https://www.jewage.org/wiki/en/Article:Leo_Wiener_-_Biography</ref> <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" /> <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5">https://nationalmedals.org/laureate/norbert-wiener/</ref> <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3">https://history.computer.org/pioneers/wiener.html</ref> <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father Leo, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would proof to be useful later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":6">https://austria-forum.org/af/AustriaWiki/Norbert_Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York in 1910. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912 at the age of 17. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4">https://www.britannica.com/biography/Norbert-Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life and scientific career was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3" /> <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge in 1919 due to a recommenadtion by William Fogg Osgood. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":6" /> <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in the renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy.<ref name=":0" /><ref>[https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen. https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen.]</ref><ref>https://www.eea.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/info/1041/2723.htm</ref> <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]].<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener did not intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":4" /><br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as its own scientific field. The name [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /><ref>[[gB:Cybernetics]]</ref><br />
<br />
Although the idea itself was not groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1964 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<ref>https://www.nationalbook.org/books/god-and-golem-inc-a-comment-on-certain-points-where-cybernetics-impinges-on-religion/</ref><br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<ref>https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/6544</ref><br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<ref name=":0" /><br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<ref>https://www.siam.org/programs-initiatives/prizes-awards/joint-prizes/ams-siam-norbert-wiener-prize/</ref><br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<ref>https://archivesspace.mit.edu/repositories/2/resources/600</ref><br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references /></div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29358Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T11:40:58Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
== Abstract ==<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like probability theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906).<ref name=":0">https://www.nasonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/wiener-norbert.pdf</ref><ref name=":1">https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Wiener_Norbert/</ref> <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead.<ref name=":0" /><ref>https://bulteno.esperanto-usa.org/a/1980/08/50-wiener/</ref><ref name=":2">https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14901-wiener-leo</ref><ref>https://www.jewage.org/wiki/en/Article:Leo_Wiener_-_Biography</ref> <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" /> <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5">https://nationalmedals.org/laureate/norbert-wiener/</ref> <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3">https://history.computer.org/pioneers/wiener.html</ref> <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father Leo, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would proof to be useful later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":6">https://austria-forum.org/af/AustriaWiki/Norbert_Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York in 1910. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912 at the age of 17. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4">https://www.britannica.com/biography/Norbert-Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life and scientific career was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3" /> <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge in 1919 due to a recommenadtion by William Fogg Osgood. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":6" /> <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in the renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy.<ref name=":0" /><ref>[https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen. https://science.orf.at/stories/3200009/#:~:text=Als%20Norbert%20Wiener%20die%20Kybernetik,an%20analogen%20Computern%20und%20Schaltungen.]</ref><ref>https://www.eea.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/info/1041/2723.htm</ref> <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]].<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener did not intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as its own scientific field. The name [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<br />
<br />
Although the idea itself was not groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school.<br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal.<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references /></div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29351Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T10:56:03Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
== Abstract ==<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like probability theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906).<ref name=":0">https://www.nasonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/wiener-norbert.pdf</ref><ref name=":1">https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Wiener_Norbert/</ref> <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead.<ref name=":0" /><ref>https://bulteno.esperanto-usa.org/a/1980/08/50-wiener/</ref><ref name=":2">https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14901-wiener-leo</ref><ref>https://www.jewage.org/wiki/en/Article:Leo_Wiener_-_Biography</ref> <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" /> <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3">https://history.computer.org/pioneers/wiener.html</ref> <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would come in handy later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912 at the age of 17. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4">https://www.britannica.com/biography/Norbert-Wiener</ref> <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life and scientific career was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /> <br />
<br />
Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge in 1919. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University. <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in the renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]]. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener did not intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of Cybernetics. The name Cybernetics stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<br />
<br />
Although the idea itself was not groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school.<br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal.<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references /></div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29350Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T10:38:58Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
== Abstract ==<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like probability theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906).<ref name=":0">https://www.nasonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/wiener-norbert.pdf</ref><ref>https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Wiener_Norbert/</ref> <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead.<ref name=":0" /><ref>https://bulteno.esperanto-usa.org/a/1980/08/50-wiener/</ref><ref>https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14901-wiener-leo</ref><ref>https://www.jewage.org/wiki/en/Article:Leo_Wiener_-_Biography</ref> <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939. <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics. <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret. <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would come in handy later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions. <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. <br />
<br />
Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge in 1919. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University. <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in the renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]]. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener did not intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of Cybernetics. The name Cybernetics stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<br />
<br />
Although the idea itself was not groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school.<br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal.<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<references /></div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29349Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T10:34:12Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
== Abstract ==<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like probability theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906).<ref name=":0">https://www.nasonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/wiener-norbert.pdf</ref><ref>https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Wiener_Norbert/</ref> <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939. <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics. <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret. <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would come in handy later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions. <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. <br />
<br />
Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge in 1919. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University. <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in the renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]]. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener did not intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of Cybernetics. The name Cybernetics stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<br />
<br />
Although the idea itself wasn't groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school.<br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal.<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29348Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T10:33:12Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like probability theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906).<ref name=":0">https://www.nasonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/wiener-norbert.pdf</ref><ref>https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Wiener_Norbert/</ref> <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939. <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics. <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret. <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would come in handy later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions. <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. <br />
<br />
Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge in 1919. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University. <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in the renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]]. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener did not intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of Cybernetics. The name Cybernetics stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<br />
<br />
Although the idea itself wasn't groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school.<br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal.<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29347Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T10:29:49Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like probability theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906).<ref name=":0">https://www.nasonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/wiener-norbert.pdf</ref><ref>https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Wiener_Norbert/</ref> <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939. <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics. <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret. <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would come in handy later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions. <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. <br />
<br />
Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge in 1919. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University. <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in the renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]]. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener didn't intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of Cybernetics. The name Cybernetics stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<br />
<br />
Although the idea itself wasn't groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school<br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29346Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T10:29:04Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like Probability Theory, Potential Theory and Mathematical Analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906).<ref name=":0">https://www.nasonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/wiener-norbert.pdf</ref><ref>https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Wiener_Norbert/</ref> <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939. <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics. <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret. <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would come in handy later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions. <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. <br />
<br />
Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge in 1919. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University. <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in the renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]]. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener didn't intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of Cybernetics. The name Cybernetics stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<br />
<br />
Although the idea itself wasn't groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school<br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29343Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T10:18:01Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like Probability Theory, Potential Theory and Mathematical Analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead. <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939. <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics. <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret. <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would come in handy later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions. <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. <br />
<br />
Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge in 1919. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University. <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in the renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]]. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener didn't intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of Cybernetics. The name Cybernetics stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<br />
<br />
Although the idea itself wasn't groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school<br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29338Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T10:01:37Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like Probability Theory, Potential Theory and Mathematical Analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead. <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939. <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics. <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret. <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would come in handy later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions. <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. <br />
<br />
Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge in 1919. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University. <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]]. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener didn't intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of Cybernetics. The name Cybernetics stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<br />
<br />
Although the idea itself wasn't groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school<br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29316Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T09:22:07Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like Probability Theory, Potential Theory and Mathematical Analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead. <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939. <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics. <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret. <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would come in handy later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions. <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. <br />
<br />
Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge in 1919. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University. <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]]. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener didn't intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of Cybernetics. The name Cybernetics stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<br />
<br />
Although the idea itself wasn't groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school<br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== References ==</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29313Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T09:14:00Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like Probability Theory, Potential Theory and Mathematical Analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead. <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939. <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics. <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret. <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would come in handy later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions. <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. <br />
<br />
Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University. <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]]. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener didn't intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of Cybernetics. The name Cybernetics stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<br />
<br />
Although the idea itself wasn't groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school<br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== References ==</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29312Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T08:37:12Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like Probability Theory, Potential Theory and Mathematical Analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead. <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939. <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics. <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret. <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would come in handy later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions. <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. <br />
<br />
Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University. <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]]. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener didn't intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of Cybernetics. The name Cybernetics stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<br />
<br />
Although the idea itself wasn't groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school<br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== References ==</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29311Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T08:36:53Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like Probability Theory, Potential Theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead. <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939. <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics. <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret. <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would come in handy later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions. <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. <br />
<br />
Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University. <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]]. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener didn't intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of Cybernetics. The name Cybernetics stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<br />
<br />
Although the idea itself wasn't groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school<br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== References ==</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29310Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T04:10:44Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead. <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939. <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics. <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret. <br />
<br />
Wiener died on a lecture tour he was giving in Scandinavia on the eighteenth of march in 1964 at the age of 69 in company of his wife Magaret. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would come in handy later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions. <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. <br />
<br />
Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University. <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]]. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener didn't intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research this new direction of interdisciplinary scientific topics. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology and medicine in collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. Wiener also dealt with engineering applications for his mathematical theories together with the two electrical engineers Julian Bigelow and Lee Yuk-wing.<br />
<br />
In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" as a result to his multi- and interdisciplinary research from the prior years. The book is seen as the founding publication of Cybernetics. The name Cybernetics stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment.<br />
<br />
Although the idea itself wasn't groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards and honors ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school<br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<br />
<br />
In 1960 Wiener received the ASTME Research Medal<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
In 1970 a lunar crater was named after Norbert Wiener.<br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Selection of publications made by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== References ==</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29309Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T03:35:44Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead. <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939. <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics. <br />
<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would come in handy later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions. <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. <br />
<br />
Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University. <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with the mathematician Harald Bohr (brother of physicist Niels Bohr) on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]]. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener didn't intend to focus his work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering.<br />
<br />
He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research interdisciplinary scientific topics in this new direction. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology, medicine and also attended to engineering development for his mathematical theories. In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" which is seen as the founding publication of Cybernetics. The name Cybernetics stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment. Although the idea itself wasn't groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1914 Wiener received the Bowdoin Prize from the Harvard graduate school<br />
<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1946 Wiener received the ASME Research Medal <br />
<br />
In 1949 Wiener received the Lord and Taylor American Design Award for Science and Engineering.<br />
<br />
Wiener received honorary Sc.D. degrees from Tufts University in 1946, from the University of Mexico in 1951 and from Grinell College in 1957.<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Selection of publications by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== References ==</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29308Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T02:58:41Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead. <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939. <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would come in handy later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions. <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York. There he took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy and studied under the philosophers Frank Thilly and Ernest Albee. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy under Edward Vermilye Huntington, George Santayana, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Palmer. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt who worked on mathematical logic at Tufts, Wiener wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell lectures and mentorship, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly with enthusiasm. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and philosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. <br />
<br />
Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. <br />
<br />
In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. <br />
<br />
After World War 1 ended and Oswald Veblen left the ballistics program to return to Princeton University along with some of the more talented mathematicians of the program, Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919. He would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians. His travels would often times bring him to Europe for example to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 where he met the French mathematician Maurice René Fréchet. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship at Cambridge University. <br />
<br />
During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. <br />
<br />
From 1926 until 1927 Wiener was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship of which he spent the first semester in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born because Wieners stochastic description was linked to the topic of quantum mechanics. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with Niels Bohr on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. <br />
<br />
From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. <br />
<br />
Upon his return to the USA, Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley from 1932 until 1933 to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. <br />
<br />
From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Peiping, now known as Beijing. Because of his talent for languages, he quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. <br />
<br />
After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wiener's focus shifted and he became highly interested the applied mathematics. Because of the war, he started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a part of the foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]]. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener didn't intend to work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering. He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research interdisciplinary topics in this new direction. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology, medicine and also attended to engineering development for his mathematical theories. In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" which is seen as the founding publication of Cybernetics. The name Cybernetics stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment. Although the idea itself wasn't groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Selection of publications by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== Personal life ==<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.<br />
<br />
== References ==</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29307Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T02:03:53Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead. <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939. <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Norbert Wiener would later also contribute important research to both of the topics. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would come in handy later in his life. In 1901 Wiener, his parents and his sister Constance went on a trip to Europe. Wiener would later regularly travel to Europe to meet with other scientists and even lived in Europe on different occasions. <br />
<br />
After his trip to Europe, Wiener was sent to school in 1901 at the age of 7, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his, for his age, already advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. <br />
<br />
After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree with excellent grades from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work due to Wiener's poor eye sight and clumsiness, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York and took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy. Wiener received his M.A. degree from Havard Graduate College in 1912. Influenced his doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. <br />
<br />
After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would also remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell due to unsatisfactory progress in his education, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert and phylosophical lectures by Edmund Hüsserl. He would come back to Göttingen later in his life to work with well known scientist Max Born. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. <br />
<br />
Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The ballistics program ended with the end of World War 1 and Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919, where he would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians, his travels would often times bring him to Europe. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship in Cambridge. During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. From 1926 until 1927 Wiener received a Guggenheim fellowship. He spent the first semester of the fellowship in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born on the topic of quantum mechanics, which was linked to [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]] and therefor to the Wiener Process. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with Niels Bohr on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. From 1932 until 1933 Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Periping, now known as Beijing. He quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wieners focus shifted and he became highly interested the application of mathematics. He started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]]. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener didn't intend to work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering. He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research interdisciplinary topics in this new direction. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology, medicine and also attended to engineering development for his mathematical theories. In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" which is seen as the founding publication of Cybernetics. The name Cybernetics stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment. Although the idea itself wasn't groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Selection of publications by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== Personal life ==<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.<br />
<br />
== References ==</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29306Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T01:30:08Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family and origin ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of Jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Norbert Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead. <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. He found an apartment in Cambridge near Boston and after some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
Wiener's Father Leo was a distant relative to Leon Lichtenstein, a renowned German mathematician, who contributed work to potential theory and applied mathematics. Leo's son Norbert would later also contribute important research to both of the topics. <br />
<br />
Especially in the early years of Wiener's education, his father Leo played an important role as teacher and guide. And although Wiener later stated in his first Autobiography, that his relationship with his father Leo wasn't always easy, he also wrote that Leo was the only person which could be considered as a kind of mentor to Norbert. He kept close contact with him until Leo died in 1939. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. Like his father, Norbert Wiener had a talent for languages, which would come in handy later in his life. At age seven he was sent to school, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his already for his age advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York and took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy. Among others, Wiener studied under Edward Huntington, who was known for his work in mathematical philosophy at the time and received his M.A. degree in 1912. Influenced by Huntington and Wiener's doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell due to unsatisfactory progress in his education, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The ballistics program ended with the end of World War 1 and Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919, where he would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians, his travels would often times bring him to Europe. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship in Cambridge. During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. From 1926 until 1927 Wiener received a Guggenheim fellowship. He spent the first semester of the fellowship in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born on the topic of quantum mechanics, which was linked to [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]] and therefor to the Wiener Process. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with Niels Bohr on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. From 1932 until 1933 Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Periping, now known as Beijing. He quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wieners focus shifted and he became highly interested the application of mathematics. He started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]]. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener didn't intend to work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering. He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research interdisciplinary topics in this new direction. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology, medicine and also attended to engineering development for his mathematical theories. In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" which is seen as the founding publication of Cybernetics. The name Cybernetics stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment. Although the idea itself wasn't groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Selection of publications by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== Personal life ==<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.<br />
<br />
== References ==</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29305Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T01:05:38Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Norbert Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but canceled his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead. <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a Jewish German immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. After some time, he was offered a position as professor of Slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. At age seven he was sent to school, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his already for his age advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York and took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy. Among others, Wiener studied under Edward Huntington, who was known for his work in mathematical philosophy at the time and received his M.A. degree in 1912. Influenced by Huntington and Wiener's doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell due to unsatisfactory progress in his education, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The ballistics program ended with the end of World War 1 and Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919, where he would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians, his travels would often times bring him to Europe. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship in Cambridge. During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. From 1926 until 1927 Wiener received a Guggenheim fellowship. He spent the first semester of the fellowship in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born on the topic of quantum mechanics, which was linked to [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]] and therefor to the Wiener Process. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with Niels Bohr on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. From 1932 until 1933 Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Periping, now known as Beijing. He quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wieners focus shifted and he became highly interested the application of mathematics. He started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]]. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener didn't intend to work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering. He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research interdisciplinary topics in this new direction. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology, medicine and also attended to engineering development for his mathematical theories. In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" which is seen as the founding publication of Cybernetics. The name Cybernetics stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment. Although the idea itself wasn't groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Selection of publications by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== Personal life ==<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.<br />
<br />
== References ==</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29304Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-28T01:02:33Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and mathematical analysis. His most famous work is his publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in 1894 as the first son of jewish couple Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. He was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. Norbert Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). <br />
<br />
His Father Leo Wiener, born in 1862 in Białystok, Russia (now Poland) had studied medicine at the Univerity of Warsaw and engineering at the Polytechnic of Berlin and showed personal interest in mathematics, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of history and especially linguistic. Leo Wiener planned to immigrate to British Honduras to build a utopian community after Tolstoyan ideals, but cancelt his plans and arrived in New Orleans, USA in 1880 at the age of 18 instead. <br />
<br />
After his arrival in New Orleans, Leo Wiener started to work different jobs and moved between cities until he found work as a professor for modern languages at the University of Missouri. In Missouri he also met his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a jewish german immigrant. In 1895 Leo Wiener lost his job at the Missouri University and moved to Boston in hope of finding a new job there. After some time, he was offered a position as professor of slavic languages at Havard University in 1895. Although he was said to be a prodigy himself, especially regarding languages, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. At age seven he was sent to school, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his already for his age advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York and took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy. Among others, Wiener studied under Edward Huntington, who was known for his work in mathematical philosophy at the time and received his M.A. degree in 1912. Influenced by Huntington and Wiener's doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell due to unsatisfactory progress in his education, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The ballistics program ended with the end of World War 1 and Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919, where he would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians, his travels would often times bring him to Europe. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship in Cambridge. During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. From 1926 until 1927 Wiener received a Guggenheim fellowship. He spent the first semester of the fellowship in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born on the topic of quantum mechanics, which was linked to [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]] and therefor to the Wiener Process. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with Niels Bohr on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. From 1932 until 1933 Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Periping, now known as Beijing. He quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wieners focus shifted and he became highly interested the application of mathematics. He started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]]. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener didn't intend to work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering. He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research interdisciplinary topics in this new direction. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology, medicine and also attended to engineering development for his mathematical theories. In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" which is seen as the founding publication of Cybernetics. The name Cybernetics stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment. Although the idea itself wasn't groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Selection of publications by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== Personal life ==<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.<br />
<br />
== References ==</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29298Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-27T22:00:25Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and analysis. His most famous work is the publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in Columbia, Missouri in 1894, where he grew up with his siblings and his parents Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. Norbert Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). His Father Leo Wiener was an European immigrant who came to the USA in 1880. He had studied medicine in Warsaw and engineering in Berin, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of linguistic and history. From his arrival in the USA , Leo Wiener worked his way up to give lectures at Havard University from 1895, where he would later become a professor with multiple publications. He married his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a German immigrant in 1893 and although he was said to be a prodigy in linguistics, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. At age seven he was sent to school, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his already for his age advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York and took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy. Among others, Wiener studied under Edward Huntington, who was known for his work in mathematical philosophy at the time and received his M.A. degree in 1912. Influenced by Huntington and Wiener's doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell due to unsatisfactory progress in his education, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The ballistics program ended with the end of World War 1 and Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919, where he would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians, his travels would often times bring him to Europe. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship in Cambridge. During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. From 1926 until 1927 Wiener received a Guggenheim fellowship. He spent the first semester of the fellowship in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born on the topic of quantum mechanics, which was linked to [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]] and therefor to the Wiener Process. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with Niels Bohr on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. From 1932 until 1933 Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Periping, now known as Beijing. He quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wieners focus shifted and he became highly interested the application of mathematics. He started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]]. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener didn't intend to work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering. He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research interdisciplinary topics in this new direction. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology, medicine and also attended to engineering development for his mathematical theories. In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" which is seen as the founding publication of Cybernetics. The name Cybernetics stems from the Greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment. Although the idea itself wasn't groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
Wiener believed that his work was meant positively contribute to humanity and society. Therefore he didn't think much of prizes and prestige societies. Due to this opinion regarding rewards and social status, he resigned from the National Academy of Science in 1941 after being nominated in 1933. He also thought about rejecting the National Medal of Science, offered to him in 1963 but took it in the end.<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Selection of publications by Wiener ==<br />
During his career, Wiener published around fourteen books and a great number of papers and articles. The following is a selection of the most renowned publications.<br />
<br />
'''1916''' – ''The Method of Postulates in Modern Mathematics''<br />
<br />
'''1921''' – ''The Average of an Analytical Functional and the Brownian Movement''<br />
<br />
'''1924''' – ''The Quadratic Variation of a Function and Its Fourier Coefficients''<br />
<br />
'''1926''' – ''The Harmonic Analysis of Irregular Motion''<br />
<br />
'''1927''' – ''On the Closure of Certain Assemblages of Trigonometrical Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1928''' – ''A New Method in Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1930''' – ''Generalized Harmonic Analysis''<br />
<br />
'''1932''' – ''Tauberian Theorems''<br />
<br />
'''1933''' – ''The Fourier Integral and Certain of its Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1934''' – ''Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain''<br />
<br />
'''1935''' – ''Random Functions''<br />
<br />
'''1938''' – ''Fourier-Stieltjes Transforms and Singular Infinite Convolutions''<br />
<br />
'''1939''' – ''The Ergodic Theorem''<br />
<br />
'''1943''' – ''Behavior, Purpose and Teleology''<br />
<br />
'''1946''' – ''Generalizations of the Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation''<br />
<br />
'''1948''' – ''Cybernetics''<br />
<br />
'''1949''' – ''Extrapolation and Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series with Engineering Applications''<br />
<br />
'''1950''' – ''The Human Use of Human Beings''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – ''Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory''<br />
<br />
'''1953''' – Ex-Prodigy ''( first Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1956''' – ''I am a Mathematician ( second Autobiography )''<br />
<br />
'''1964''' – ''God and Golem, Inc.''<br />
<br />
== Personal life ==<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.<br />
<br />
== References ==</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29297Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-27T21:18:11Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and analysis. His most famous work is the publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in Columbia, Missouri in 1894, where he grew up with his siblings and his parents Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. Norbert Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). His Father Leo Wiener was an European immigrant who came to the USA in 1880. He had studied medicine in Warsaw and engineering in Berin, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of linguistic and history. From his arrival in the USA , Leo Wiener worked his way up to give lectures at Havard University from 1895, where he would later become a professor with multiple publications. He married his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a German immigrant in 1893 and although he was said to be a prodigy in linguistics, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. At age seven he was sent to school, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his already for his age advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York and took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy. Among others, Wiener studied under Edward Huntington, who was known for his work in mathematical philosophy at the time and received his M.A. degree in 1912. Influenced by Huntington and Wiener's doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell due to unsatisfactory progress in his education, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The ballistics program ended with the end of World War 1 and Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919, where he would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians, his travels would often times bring him to Europe. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship in Cambridge. During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. From 1926 until 1927 Wiener received a Guggenheim fellowship. He spent the first semester of the fellowship in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born on the topic of quantum mechanics, which was linked to [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]] and therefor to the Wiener Process. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with Niels Bohr on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. From 1932 until 1933 Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Periping, now known as Beijing. He quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wieners focus shifted and he became highly interested the application of mathematics. He started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]]. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener didn't intend to work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering. He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research interdisciplinary topics in this new direction. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology, medicine and also attended to engineering development for his mathematical theories. In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" which is seen as the founding publication of Cybernetics. The name Cybernetics stems from the greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment. Although the idea itself wasn't groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Personal life ==<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.<br />
<br />
== selection of publications by Wiener ==<br />
<br />
== references ==</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29296Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-27T21:16:41Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and analysis. His most famous work is the publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in Columbia, Missouri in 1894, where he grew up with his siblings and his parents Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. Norbert Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). His Father Leo Wiener was an European immigrant who came to the USA in 1880. He had studied medicine in Warsaw and engineering in Berin, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of linguistic and history. From his arrival in the USA , Leo Wiener worked his way up to give lectures at Havard University from 1895, where he would later become a professor with multiple publications. He married his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a German immigrant in 1893 and although he was said to be a prodigy in linguistics, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. At age seven he was sent to school, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his already for his age advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York and took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy. Among others, Wiener studied under Edward Huntington, who was known for his work in mathematical philosophy at the time and received his M.A. degree in 1912. Influenced by Huntington and Wiener's doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell due to unsatisfactory progress in his education, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The ballistics program ended with the end of World War 1 and Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919, where he would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians, his travels would often times bring him to Europe. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship in Cambridge. During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. From 1926 until 1927 Wiener received a Guggenheim fellowship. He spent the first semester of the fellowship in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born on the topic of quantum mechanics, which was linked to [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]] and therefor to the Wiener Process. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with Niels Bohr on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. From 1932 until 1933 Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Periping, now known as Beijing. He quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wieners focus shifted and he became highly interested the application of mathematics. He started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a foundation for his later work on [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]]. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener didn't intend to work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction over time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other fields of science mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering. He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research interdisciplinary topics in this new direction. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology, medicine and also attended to engineering development for his mathematical theories. In 1948 Wiener published his most famous work in form of the book called "Cybernetics - Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" which is seen as the founding publication of Cybernetics. The name Cybernetics stems from the greek word "kybernetes" which translates to "steersman". In the book Wiener collected ideas on how systems, mechanical or living, are steered. The general concept described in the book can be imagined as a kind of feedback loop. A system with a certain objective takes information about its own state and or its environment as input, processes the information and acts upon the given information as its output, then the loop starts from the beginning. It's like a repetitive comparison of current state of the environment to the desired state of the environment. Although the idea itself wasn't groundbreaking news and had been advanced in specific scientific fields like physiology, Wiener was the first scientist to generalize the concept to make it applicable to a broad variety of scientific fields. Today the concept has been further developed multiple times by different people in different scientific fields and brings great contributions to modern areas of application like robotic, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental analysis and more.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Personal life ==<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29290Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-27T19:33:38Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and analysis. His most famous work is the publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Family ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in Columbia, Missouri in 1894, where he grew up with his siblings and his parents Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. Norbert Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). His Father Leo Wiener was an European immigrant who came to the USA in 1880. He had studied medicine in Warsaw and engineering in Berin, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of linguistic and history. From his arrival in the USA , Leo Wiener worked his way up to give lectures at Havard University from 1895, where he would later become a professor with multiple publications. He married his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a German immigrant in 1893 and although he was said to be a prodigy in linguistics, he started to focus on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. At age seven he was sent to school, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his already for his age advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York and took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy. Among others, Wiener studied under Edward Huntington, who was known for his work in mathematical philosophy at the time and received his M.A. degree in 1912. Influenced by Huntington and Wiener's doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell due to unsatisfactory progress in his education, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regularly. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The ballistics program ended with the end of World War 1 and Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919, where he would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians, his travels would often times bring him to Europe. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship in Cambridge. During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributed work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. From 1926 until 1927 Wiener received a Guggenheim fellowship. He spent the first semester of the fellowship in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born on the topic of quantum mechanics, which was linked to [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]] and therefor to the Wiener Process. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with Niels Bohr on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. From 1932 until 1933 Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Periping, now known as Beijing. He quickly became fluent in Chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathematical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wieners focus shifted and he became highly interested the application of mathematics. He started researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers laid a foundation for his later work on Cybernetics. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener had didn't intend to work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction with time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other topics mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engineering. He started a seminar for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research interdisciplinary topics in this new direction. In these years among other publications he wrote papers on biology, medicine and also attended to engineering development for his mathematical theories.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is endowed with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
<br />
== Personal life ==<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a German emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29289Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-27T18:18:04Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and analysis. His most famous work is the publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Familiy ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in Columbia, Missouri in 1894, where he grew up with his siblings and his parents Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. Norbert Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). His Father Leo Wiener was an European immigrant who came to the USA in 1880. He had studied medicine in Warsaw and engineering in Berin, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of linguistic and history. From his arrival in the USA , Leo Wiener worked his way up to give lectures at Havard University from 1895, where he would later become a professor with multiple publications. He married his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a german immigrant in 1893 and although he was said to be a prodigy in linguistics, he started to focuse on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. At age seven he was sent to school, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his already for his age advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York and took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy. Among others, Wiener studied under Edward Huntington, who was known for his work in mathematical philosophy at the time and received his M.A. degree in 1912. Influenced by Huntington and Wiener's doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell due to unsatisfactory progress in his education, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regulary. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The ballistics program ended with the end of World War 1 and Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919, where he would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians, his travels would often times bring him to Europe. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship in Cambridge. During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributeted work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. From 1926 until 1927 Wiener received a Guggenheim fellowship. He spent the first semester of the fellowship in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born on the topic of quatum mechanics, which was linked to [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]] and therefor to the Wiener Process. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with Niels Bohr on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. From 1932 until 1933 Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Periping, now known as Beijing. He quickly became fluent in chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathmatical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wieners focus shiftet and he became highly interested the applicaion of mathematics. He startet researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers layed a foundation for his later work on Cybernetics. <br />
<br />
== Cybernetics ==<br />
After World War 2 Wiener had didn't intend to work as much on theoretical mathematics as he had done before the war. His interests had shifted to applied mathematics and only grew stronger in that direction with time. Although he had always been somewhat multidisciplinary, his interests also grew in that direction in the 1940s, combining among other topics mathematics, physiology, psychology and communication engeneering. He started a seminar for for scientists and engineers in the greater Boston area, to further research interdisciplinary topics in this new direction. In these years among other pubications he wrote papers on biology, medicine and also attented to engineering development for his mathematical theories.<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is dotated with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
== Personal life ==<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a german emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29287Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-27T18:01:46Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and analysis. His most famous work is the publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Familiy ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in Columbia, Missouri in 1894, where he grew up with his siblings and his parents Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. Norbert Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). His Father Leo Wiener was an European immigrant who came to the USA in 1880. He had studied medicine in Warsaw and engineering in Berin, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of linguistic and history. From his arrival in the USA , Leo Wiener worked his way up to give lectures at Havard University from 1895, where he would later become a professor with multiple publications. He married his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a german immigrant in 1893 and although he was said to be a prodigy in linguistics, he started to focuse on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. At age seven he was sent to school, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his already for his age advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York and took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy. Among others, Wiener studied under Edward Huntington, who was known for his work in mathematical philosophy at the time and received his M.A. degree in 1912. Influenced by Huntington and Wiener's doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell due to unsatisfactory progress in his education, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regulary. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The ballistics program ended with the end of World War 1 and Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919, where he would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians, his travels would often times bring him to Europe. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship in Cambridge. During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributeted work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. From 1926 until 1927 Wiener received a Guggenheim fellowship. He spent the first semester of the fellowship in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born on the topic of quatum mechanics, which was linked to [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]] and therefor to the Wiener Process. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with Niels Bohr on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. From 1932 until 1933 Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Periping, now known as Beijing. He quickly became fluent in chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathmatical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wieners focus shiftet and he became highly interested the applicaion of mathematics. He startet researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers layed a foundation for his later work on Cybernetics. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
<br />
== Scientific awards ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is dotated with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
== Personal life ==<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a german emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29286Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-27T18:01:23Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and analysis. His most famous work is the publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Familiy ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in Columbia, Missouri in 1894, where he grew up with his siblings and his parents Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. Norbert Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). His Father Leo Wiener was an European immigrant who came to the USA in 1880. He had studied medicine in Warsaw and engineering in Berin, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of linguistic and history. From his arrival in the USA , Leo Wiener worked his way up to give lectures at Havard University from 1895, where he would later become a professor with multiple publications. He married his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a german immigrant in 1893 and although he was said to be a prodigy in linguistics, he started to focuse on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. At age seven he was sent to school, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his already for his age advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York and took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy. Among others, Wiener studied under Edward Huntington, who was known for his work in mathematical philosophy at the time and received his M.A. degree in 1912. Influenced by Huntington and Wiener's doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell due to unsatisfactory progress in his education, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regulary. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The ballistics program ended with the end of World War 1 and Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919, where he would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians, his travels would often times bring him to Europe. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship in Cambridge. During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributeted work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. From 1926 until 1927 Wiener received a Guggenheim fellowship. He spent the first semester of the fellowship in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born on the topic of quatum mechanics, which was linked to [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]] and therefor to the Wiener Process. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with Niels Bohr on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. From 1932 until 1933 Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Periping, now known as Beijing. He quickly became fluent in chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathmatical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wieners focus shiftet and he became highly interested the applicaion of mathematics. He startet researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. This research on applied mathematics regarding prediction theory and his research from his time in China on applied mathematics regarding analog computers layed a foundation for his later work on Cybernetics. <br />
<br />
== Scientific awards ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is dotated with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
== Personal life ==<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a german emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29285Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-27T17:30:49Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and analysis. His most famous work is the publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Familiy ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in Columbia, Missouri in 1894, where he grew up with his siblings and his parents Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. Norbert Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). His Father Leo Wiener was an European immigrant who came to the USA in 1880. He had studied medicine in Warsaw and engineering in Berin, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of linguistic and history. From his arrival in the USA , Leo Wiener worked his way up to give lectures at Havard University from 1895, where he would later become a professor with multiple publications. He married his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a german immigrant in 1893 and although he was said to be a prodigy in linguistics, he started to focuse on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. At age seven he was sent to school, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his already for his age advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York and took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy. Among others, Wiener studied under Edward Huntington, who was known for his work in mathematical philosophy at the time and received his M.A. degree in 1912. Influenced by Huntington and Wiener's doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell due to unsatisfactory progress in his education, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regulary. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The ballistics program ended with the end of World War 1 and Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919, where he would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians, his travels would often times bring him to Europe. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship in Cambridge. During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributeted work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. From 1926 until 1927 Wiener received a Guggenheim fellowship. He spent the first semester of the fellowship in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born on the topic of quatum mechanics, which was linked to [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]] and therefor to the Wiener Process. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with Niels Bohr on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. From 1932 until 1933 Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Periping, now known as Beijing. He quickly became fluent in chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathmatical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wieners focus shiftet and he became highly interested the applicaion of mathematics. He startet researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. <br />
<br />
== Scientific awards ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is dotated with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
== Personal life ==<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a german emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29284Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-27T17:30:09Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and analysis. His most famous work is the publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Familiy ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in Columbia, Missouri in 1894, where he grew up with his siblings and his parents Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. Norbert Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). His Father Leo Wiener was an European immigrant who came to the USA in 1880. He had studied medicine in Warsaw and engineering in Berin, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of linguistic and history. From his arrival in the USA , Leo Wiener worked his way up to give lectures at Havard University from 1895, where he would later become a professor with multiple publications. He married his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a german immigrant in 1893 and although he was said to be a prodigy in linguistics, he started to focuse on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. At age seven he was sent to school, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his already for his age advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York and took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy. Among others, Wiener studied under Edward Huntington, who was known for his work in mathematical philosophy at the time and received his M.A. degree in 1912. Influenced by Huntington and Wiener's doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell due to unsatisfactory progress in his education, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regulary. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The ballistics program ended with the end of World War 1 and Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919, where he would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians, his travels would often times bring him to Europe. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship in Cambridge. During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributeted work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. From 1926 until 1927 Wiener received a Guggenheim fellowship. He spent the first semester of the fellowship in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born on the topic of quatum mechanics, which was linked to [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]] and therefor to the Wiener Process. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with Niels Bohr on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. From 1932 until 1933 Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Periping, now known as Beijing. He quickly became fluent in chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathmatical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wieners focus shiftet and he became highly interested the applicaion of mathematics. He startet researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. <br />
<br />
== Scientific awards ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is dotated with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
== Personal life ==<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a german emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29283Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-27T17:29:49Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and analysis. His most famous work is the publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Familiy ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in Columbia, Missouri in 1894, where he grew up with his siblings and his parents Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. Norbert Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). His Father Leo Wiener was an European immigrant who came to the USA in 1880. He had studied medicine in Warsaw and engineering in Berin, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of linguistic and history. From his arrival in the USA , Leo Wiener worked his way up to give lectures at Havard University from 1895, where he would later become a professor with multiple publications. He married his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a german immigrant in 1893 and although he was said to be a prodigy in linguistics, he started to focuse on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. At age seven he was sent to school, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his already for his age advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York and took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy. Among others, Wiener studied under Edward Huntington, who was known for his work in mathematical philosophy at the time and received his M.A. degree in 1912. Influenced by Huntington and Wiener's doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell due to unsatisfactory progress in his education, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regulary. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The ballistics program ended with the end of World War 1 and Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919, where he would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians, his travels would often times bring him to Europe. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship in Cambridge. During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributeted work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. From 1926 until 1927 Wiener received a Guggenheim fellowship. He spent the first semester of the fellowship in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born on the topic of quatum mechanics, which was linked to [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]] and therefor to the Wiener Process. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with Niels Bohr on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. From 1932 until 1933 Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Periping, now known as Beijing. He quickly became fluent in chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathmatical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wieners focus shiftet and he became highly interested the applicaion of mathematics. He startet researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. <br />
<br />
== Scientific awards ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Norbert-Wiener-Prize ==<br />
<br />
The Norbert-Wiener-Prize is a prize in honor of Norbert Wiener which is awarded to scientists for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics. The prize is awarded every three years (every five years before 2004) by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) since 1967. Nominees must be members of ether the AMS or the SIAM. The prize is dotated with 5000$ and a certificate.<br />
== Personal life ==<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a german emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29280Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-27T17:17:10Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and analysis. His most famous work is the publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Familiy ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in Columbia, Missouri in 1894, where he grew up with his siblings and his parents Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. Norbert Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). His Father Leo Wiener was an European immigrant who came to the USA in 1880. He had studied medicine in Warsaw and engineering in Berin, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of linguistic and history. From his arrival in the USA , Leo Wiener worked his way up to give lectures at Havard University from 1895, where he would later become a professor with multiple publications. He married his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a german immigrant in 1893 and although he was said to be a prodigy in linguistics, he started to focuse on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. At age seven he was sent to school, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his already for his age advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York and took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy. Among others, Wiener studied under Edward Huntington, who was known for his work in mathematical philosophy at the time and received his M.A. degree in 1912. Influenced by Huntington and Wiener's doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell due to unsatisfactory progress in his education, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regulary. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The ballistics program ended with the end of World War 1 and Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919, where he would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians, his travels would often times bring him to Europe. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship in Cambridge. During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributeted work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. From 1926 until 1927 Wiener received a Guggenheim fellowship. He spent the first semester of the fellowship in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born on the topic of quatum mechanics, which was linked to [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]] and therefor to the Wiener Process. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with Niels Bohr on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. From 1932 until 1933 Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Periping, now known as Beijing. He quickly became fluent in chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathmatical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wieners focus shiftet and he became highly interested the applicaion of mathematics. He startet researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. <br />
<br />
== Scientific awards ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
== Norbert Wiener ==<br />
<br />
<br />
== Personal life ==<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a german emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29279Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-27T17:14:04Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and analysis. His most famous work is the publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Familiy ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in Columbia, Missouri in 1894, where he grew up with his siblings and his parents Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. Norbert Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). His Father Leo Wiener was an European immigrant who came to the USA in 1880. He had studied medicine in Warsaw and engineering in Berin, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of linguistic and history. From his arrival in the USA , Leo Wiener worked his way up to give lectures at Havard University from 1895, where he would later become a professor with multiple publications. He married his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a german immigrant in 1893 and although he was said to be a prodigy in linguistics, he started to focuse on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. At age seven he was sent to school, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his already for his age advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York and took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy. Among others, Wiener studied under Edward Huntington, who was known for his work in mathematical philosophy at the time and received his M.A. degree in 1912. Influenced by Huntington and Wiener's doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell due to unsatisfactory progress in his education, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regulary. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The ballistics program ended with the end of World War 1 and Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919, where he would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians, his travels would often times bring him to Europe. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship in Cambridge. During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributeted work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. From 1926 until 1927 Wiener received a Guggenheim fellowship. He spent the first semester of the fellowship in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born on the topic of quatum mechanics, which was linked to [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]] and therefor to the Wiener Process. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with Niels Bohr on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. From 1932 until 1933 Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Periping, now known as Beijing. He quickly became fluent in chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathmatical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wieners focus shiftet and he became highly interested the applicaion of mathematics. He startet researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. <br />
<br />
== Scientific awards ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson for his work on theoretical and applied mathematics.<br />
<br />
In 1965, one year after his death, Wiener received the U.S. National Book Award from the National Book Foundation for his book "God and Golem, Inc."<br />
<br />
== Personal life ==<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a german emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29278Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-27T17:06:49Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and analysis. His most famous work is the publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Familiy ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in Columbia, Missouri in 1894, where he grew up with his siblings and his parents Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. Norbert Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). His Father Leo Wiener was an European immigrant who came to the USA in 1880. He had studied medicine in Warsaw and engineering in Berin, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of linguistic and history. From his arrival in the USA , Leo Wiener worked his way up to give lectures at Havard University from 1895, where he would later become a professor with multiple publications. He married his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a german immigrant in 1893 and although he was said to be a prodigy in linguistics, he started to focuse on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. At age seven he was sent to school, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his already for his age advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York and took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy. Among others, Wiener studied under Edward Huntington, who was known for his work in mathematical philosophy at the time and received his M.A. degree in 1912. Influenced by Huntington and Wiener's doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell due to unsatisfactory progress in his education, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regulary. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The ballistics program ended with the end of World War 1 and Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919, where he would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians, his travels would often times bring him to Europe. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship in Cambridge. During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributeted work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. From 1926 until 1927 Wiener received a Guggenheim fellowship. He spent the first semester of the fellowship in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born on the topic of quatum mechanics, which was linked to [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]] and therefor to the Wiener Process. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with Niels Bohr on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. From 1932 until 1933 Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Periping, now known as Beijing. He quickly became fluent in chinese and worked at the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering, where he would, among other things, research mathmatical problems regarding analog computers. During his time in China he published multiple articles on harmonic analysis referencing the work of his friend Hardy. After the start of World War 2 in 1939 Wieners focus shiftet and he became highly interested the applicaion of mathematics. He startet researching prediction theory for anti-aircraft-fire control. The results of this work were published in a book called "Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing on Stationary Time Series" in 1950. <br />
<br />
== Scientific awards ==<br />
[[File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg|thumb|Figure 2: Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963]]<br />
In 1933 Wiener received the Bôcher Memorial Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his publication "Tauberian Theorems".<br />
<br />
In 1963 Wiener received the National Medal of Science awarded by former US-President Lyndon Baines Johnson.<br />
<br />
In 1964, one year after his death, Wiener received<br />
<br />
== Personal life ==<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a german emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=File:NorbertWiener_NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg&diff=29277File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg2025-12-27T17:03:48Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>== Summary ==<br />
Picture of Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963.<br />
<br />
Source: https: https://omeka-mitlibraries.s3.amazonaws.com/original/5fc9bd7e5cb6fab9e0edad83f22751cc4e0e4562.jpeg</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=File:NorbertWiener_NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg&diff=29276File:NorbertWiener NationalMedalofScienceCeremony.jpeg2025-12-27T17:03:03Z<p>David: Picture of Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963.
Source: https:
https://omeka-mitlibraries.s3.amazonaws.com/original/5fc9bd7e5cb6fab9e0edad83f22751cc4e0e4562.jpeg</p>
<hr />
<div>== Summary ==<br />
Picture of Norbert Wiener at the National Medal of Science Ceremony in 1963.<br />
Source: https:<br />
https://omeka-mitlibraries.s3.amazonaws.com/original/5fc9bd7e5cb6fab9e0edad83f22751cc4e0e4562.jpeg</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29273Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-27T15:48:26Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and analysis. His most famous work is the publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Familiy ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in Columbia, Missouri in 1894, where he grew up with his siblings and his parents Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. Norbert Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). His Father Leo Wiener was an European immigrant who came to the USA in 1880. He had studied medicine in Warsaw and engineering in Berin, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of linguistic and history. From his arrival in the USA , Leo Wiener worked his way up to give lectures at Havard University from 1895, where he would later become a professor with multiple publications. He married his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a german immigrant in 1893 and although he was said to be a prodigy in linguistics, he started to focuse on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. At age seven he was sent to school, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his already for his age advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York and took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy. Among others, Wiener studied under Edward Huntington, who was known for his work in mathematical philosophy at the time and received his M.A. degree in 1912. Influenced by Huntington and Wiener's doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell due to unsatisfactory progress in his education, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regulary. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The ballistics program ended with the end of World War 1 and Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919, where he would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians, his travels would often times bring him to Europe. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship in Cambridge. During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributeted work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. From 1926 until 1927 Wiener received a Guggenheim fellowship. He spent the first semester of the fellowship in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born on the topic of quatum mechanics, which was linked to [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]] and therefor to the Wiener Process. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with Niels Bohr on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. From 1932 until 1933 Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Periping, now known as Beijing. <br />
<br />
== Scientific awards ==<br />
<br />
== Personal life ==<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a german emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29272Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-27T15:47:20Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and analysis. His most famous work is the publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Familiy ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in Columbia, Missouri in 1894, where he grew up with his siblings and his parents Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. Norbert Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). His Father Leo Wiener was an European immigrant who came to the USA in 1880. He had studied medicine in Warsaw and engineering in Berin, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of linguistic and history. From his arrival in the USA , Leo Wiener worked his way up to give lectures at Havard University from 1895, where he would later become a professor with multiple publications. He married his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a german immigrant in 1893 and although he was said to be a prodigy in linguistics, he started to focuse on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. At age seven he was sent to school, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his already for his age advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York and took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy. Among others, Wiener studied under Edward Huntington, who was known for his work in mathematical philosophy at the time and received his M.A. degree in 1912. Influenced by Huntington and Wiener's doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell due to unsatisfactory progress in his education, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regulary. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The ballistics program ended with the end of World War 1 and Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919, where he would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians, his travels would often times bring him to Europe. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship in Cambridge. During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributeted work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. From 1926 until 1927 Wiener received a Guggenheim fellowship. He spent the first semester of the fellowship in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born on the topic of quatum mechanics, which was linked to [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]] and therefor to the Wiener Process. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhagen to collaborate with Niels Bohr on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. From 1932 until 1933 Wiener collaborated with the young mathematician Raymond Paley to further research the topics of harmonic and stochastic analysis. Their work was published by Wiener in a renowned book called "Fourier Transforms in the Complex Domain" in 1934. From 1935 until 1936 Wiener went to China to work at the Tsing Hua University in Periping, now known as Beijing. <br />
<br />
== Renowned work ==<br />
<br />
== Personal life ==<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a german emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29270Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-27T15:11:48Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and analysis. His most famous work is the publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Familiy ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in Columbia, Missouri in 1894, where he grew up with his siblings and his parents Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. Norbert Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). His Father Leo Wiener was an European immigrant who came to the USA in 1880. He had studied medicine in Warsaw and engineering in Berin, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of linguistic and history. From his arrival in the USA , Leo Wiener worked his way up to give lectures at Havard University from 1895, where he would later become a professor with multiple publications. He married his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a german immigrant in 1893 and although he was said to be a prodigy in linguistics, he started to focuse on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. At age seven he was sent to school, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his already for his age advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York and took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy. Among others, Wiener studied under Edward Huntington, who was known for his work in mathematical philosophy at the time and received his M.A. degree in 1912. Influenced by Huntington and Wiener's doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell due to unsatisfactory progress in his education, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regulary. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The ballistics program ended with the end of World War 1 and Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919, where he would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians, his travels would often times bring him to Europe. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship in Cambridge. During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributeted work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. From 1926 until 1927 Wiener received a Guggenheim fellowship. He spent the first semester of the fellowship in Göttingen where he collaborated with Max Born on the topic of quatum mechanics, which was linked to [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]] and therefor to the Wiener Process. For the second semester, Wiener went to Copenhangen to collaborate with Niels Bohr on further examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]]. His work there was among other topics published in his scientific memoir "Generalized Harmonic Analysis" from 1930. From 1931 until 1932, Wiener and his family moved to Cambridge, England, where he held lectures on the topic of harmonic analysis at Cambridge University. In 1932 Wiener published another important scientific article called "Tauberian Theorems" which included new insights to the asymptotic behavior of certain mathematical functions. <br />
<br />
== Renowned work ==<br />
<br />
== Personal life ==<br />
In 1926 Wiener married his wife Margaret Engemann, a german emigrant who taught modern languages at the Juniata College in Pennsylvania. In 1928 their first daughter Babara was born and in the following year they received their second daughter Magaret.</div>Davidhttps://www.glossalab.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Norbert_Wiener&diff=29256Draft:Norbert Wiener2025-12-27T14:15:14Z<p>David: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Proposal<br />
|Was created on date=2025-12-23<br />
|Belongs to clarus=Understanding Complexity<br />
|Has author=David Kaufmann (David)<br />
|Has publication status=glossaLAB:Open<br />
}}<br />
'''Norbert Wiener''' (26.11.1894, Columbia - 18.03.1964, Stockholm) was an American mathematician who contributed work to to topics like probability Theory, potential theory and analysis. His most famous work is the publication "Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine" from 1948, in which he introduces [[gB:Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] as a new interdisciplinary field of science.<br />
<br />
== Familiy ==<br />
[[File:Loffit-norbert-wiener-matematico-fundador-de-la-cibernetica-02.jpg.webp|thumb|Figure 1: Norbert Wiener]]Norbert Wiener was born in Columbia, Missouri in 1894, where he grew up with his siblings and his parents Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn Wiener. Norbert Wiener had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers of whom two died in infancy. The names of his siblings were Constance Wiener (born in 1898), Bertha Wiener (born in 1902) and Frederick Wiener (born in 1906). His Father Leo Wiener was an European immigrant who came to the USA in 1880. He had studied medicine in Warsaw and engineering in Berin, but was later known for his expertise in the fields of linguistic and history. From his arrival in the USA , Leo Wiener worked his way up to give lectures at Havard University from 1895, where he would later become a professor with multiple publications. He married his wife Bertha Kahn, daughter of a german immigrant in 1893 and although he was said to be a prodigy in linguistics, he started to focuse on his family after the birth of his first child Norbert Wiener in 1894. <br />
<br />
== Early life and education ==<br />
Education was very important for Wieners father Leo and since the family had a small library with books on various topics, Norbert started reading from a young age. At age seven he was sent to school, where he started in third grade and was quickly moved up to fourth grade due to his already for his age advanced education. Shortly after he entered fourth grade, Wiener's father removed him from school, due to problems with arithmetic and started home schooling him. After two years of home schooling, Wiener entered the Ayer high school in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1906 at the age of eleven. He continued his education at Tufts College near Boston, where he studied biology and mathematics. After successfully receiving his A.B. degree from Tufts College in 1909 at the age of fourteen, he went on to enroll at Havard Graduate College in Cambridge, to study zoology. Because of continuous struggles with laboratory work, he changed institutions to Cornell University in New York and took a scholarship at the Sage School of Philosophy. A year later he came back to Havard Graduate College, but this time to continue studying philosophy. Among others, Wiener studied under Edward Huntington, who was known for his work in mathematical philosophy at the time and received his M.A. degree in 1912. Influenced by Huntington and Wiener's doctorate supervisor Karl Schmidt, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on mathematical logic and received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1913 at the age of 18. After graduating he was granted a traveling fellowship and went to England to pursue his studies on mathematical logic at Cambridge under the famous mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. During his fellowship, Wiener started to focus more and more on mathematics while still attending philosophy classes. One professor, who especially sparked his fascination for mathematics and who would remain an important figure in later stages of Wiener's life was professor Godfrey Harold Hardy. At the time, Hardy was one of England's leading mathematicians with expertise in mathematical analysis and number theory. Wiener, who at the time was slightly disappointed by Russell due to unsatisfactory progress in his education, started to attend Hardy's classes on mathematics regulary. During the Second Semester of the fellowship, Russell was absent and Wiener decided to go to Göttingen, Germany to attend mathematical lectures by Edmund Landau and David Hilbert. Shortly after his return to Cambridge, World War 1 broke out, leading to his departure from England. Back in the USA, he was given a second fellowship at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under philosopher John Dewey. <br />
<br />
== Career ==<br />
Following his fellowship at Columbia University, Wiener started working at back in Boston, where he received a junior position at Havard University. During 1915 and 1916 he held lectures on logic of geometry. In the years 1916 - 1918 he worked multiple Jobs. Among other activities the most noticeable jobs were as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corporation in Lynn in 1917, as a mathematics instructor at the University of Maine in Orono from 1916 until 1917 and as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany from 1917 until 1918. In 1918 Wiener received a job offer from Oswald Veblen, a renowned professor from Princeton University, to research ballistics at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The ballistics program ended with the end of World War 1 and Wiener was offered a position as a mathematical instructor at MIT in Cambridge in 1919, where he would stay on the faculty until his retirement in 1960. In the years after 1919, Wiener traveled a lot to meet with different leading scientists and especially mathematicians, his travels would often times bring him to Europe. One mathematician he would often visit was Godfrey Harold Hardy under whom he had studied on his first fellowship in Cambridge. During this time, Wiener worked on different mathematical problems and theories. The first important topic to which he contributeted work, was his examination of [[IESC:BROWNIAN MOTION|Brownian Motion]], the motion of microscopic gas or liquid particles. He described the stochastic process behind the random motion of the particles, which was later named Wiener Process in his honor. He also made important contributions to the topic of potential theory. From 1926 until 1927 Wiener received a Guggenheim Fellowship, of which he spent the first semster in Göttingen with Max Born and the second Semester in Copenhagen with Niels Bohr <br />
<br />
== Renowned work ==<br />
<br />
== Personal life ==</div>David