Overview

Gender

male

Stephen Wolfram is a scientist, inventor, author lecturer, and business leader. He is the founder of Mathematica, the author of A New Kind of Science, and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research and Wolfram Alpha.

Wolfram’s early scientific work was mainly in high-energy physics, quantum field theory, and cosmology. Having started to use computers in 1973, Wolfram was well known in the emerging field of scientific computing, and in 1979 he began the construction of SMP, the first modern computer algebra system.

Through the mid-1980s, Wolfram continued his work on complexity, discovering a number of fundamental connections between computation and nature, and inventing concepts such as computational irreducibility. Following his scientific work on complex systems research, in 1986 Wolfram founded the first research center and the first journal in the field, Complex Systems.

Wolfram began the development of Mathematica in late 1986. Wolfram Research was recognized for both technology and business in the software industry.

By 1990, he was focused on foundational problems in physics, biology, computer science, mathematics, and several other fields.

He was also a lecturer at Caltech and at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In addition, he was a professor of physics, mathematics, and computer science at the University of Illinois.

Wolfram described his achievements in his 1200-page book titled A New Kind of Science. He has also written several other books related to his research.

Wolfram has been president and CEO of Wolfram Research since its founding in 1987. In addition to his business leadership, Wolfram is involved in the development of the company’s technology, and oversees all aspects of the functional design of the core Mathematica system.

Stephen Wolfram was educated at Eton, Oxford, and Caltech. He published his first scientific paper at the age of 15, and had received his PhD in theoretical physics from Caltech. In recognition of his early work in physics and computing, Wolfram became the youngest recipient of a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1981.