Currently, the words "Internet" or "computer" no longer surprise anyone. However, the advent of smart machines, which with great speed can count a great mathematical example or come into contact with any point on the planet, is closely connected with the science of cybernetics. And for any knowledgeable person, Norbert Wiener, cybernetics are two interconnected words. It is this person who rightfully calls society the “father” of this science.
short biography
Many biographers to the question: “Who is Norbert Wiener?”, Without hesitation, they will answer that he is the most vivid example of a child prodigy. The future father of cybernetics was born in America in the town of Columbia, in the state of Missouri, in 1894. His father was a native of the Russian Empire (Grodno region). He was a very educated and well-read man. He taught literature and history of Slavic languages at Harvard University . A little later, he received the post of head of the department.
From early childhood, his father prepared the boy for the career of a scientist. Perhaps, from the age of three years, Norbert Wiener began his scientific career. A short biography in most publications begins with this age. At that time, the boy already knew how to read, write, and even helped his father translate the works of L.N. Tolstoy. At the age of eight, he already skillfully reads the works of Dante and the works of Darwin. He will write his first scientific work at the age when his other peers will only begin to study the marking of sticks and hooks.
Without really attending classes in a regular high school (some sources claim that he completely ignored it), the boy enters a prestigious college, which graduates with honors ahead of schedule. At eighteen he defended his dissertation at Harvard, and after a few years became a professor at several higher educational institutions.
In his autobiography to the question: “Who is Norbert Wiener?” the scientist replies that he is a mathematician. From an early age, he was better at mathematical science, although he also did not lose sight of humanitarian aspects in education.
Work
It seems to many that the scientist is always a quiet professor with round glasses, sitting in his office and working on some kind of project. Who is Norbert Wiener, who was he? This person was significantly different from the "standard" scientist with an office. In his life, the short-sighted and slightly awkward scientist managed to work on a construction site, at a military factory, and in a newspaper. I really wanted to join the army, but was expelled from there due to vision problems.
He devoted most of his life to education, both his own and others. He works simultaneously in more than ten universities, in various departments. He teaches mathematics, logic, science, literature, social sciences. At the same time he independently learns foreign languages, masters even Chinese and Japanese.
Theorist
Who is Norbert Wiener: a practitioner or a theoretical scientist? He called himself a theorist, preferred to think more and create scientific theories, proving them with facts. Together with the American scientist Claude Shannon, he develops a modern theory of computer science.
Surely everyone knows the concept of “bit”. So it was this man who once invented it to make it easier to describe a digital code. The scientist devoted a lot of work to computer technology, probability theory and electromagnetic networks.
Cybernetics
But this person is not known to the whole world for the purpose of creating a computer. What Norbert Wiener is famous for is that he invented such a thing as cybernetics. It was he who began to develop science, the postulates of which allow the creation of artificial intelligence. The scientist presented cybernetics as an opportunity to transform the skills of animals, creating "training programs" for technology.
Wiener himself coined the word, borrowing it from the works of ancient Greek scholars. In those days, it meant “controlling a ship,” but Wiener converted cybernetics into “controlling smart machines.” He compared a person with a machine, with a clockwork that processes energy.
A book called Cybernetics was released in 1948 in America. At that time, the scientist was already fifty-four years old. However, labor, as many say, is not clear to everyone. To read this book and understand what it says, you need to have a fairly deep knowledge in the field of mathematics, philosophy, technology and neurophysiology.
Man "in himself"
Surely any actor who has to play the role of an enthusiastic and enthusiastic scientist could borrow the image of Wiener. A typical nerd with glasses and a beard, clumsy and awkward, scattered in communication with others and completely absorbed in his inner world and theories.
Eyewitnesses recalled that Wiener often, lost in thought, even forgot where he was going and what he wanted to do. Once, having encountered him in the alley, a student talked with the teacher, and then he was puzzled by his question: “Do you not remember where I was going: from the dining room or to it?”