Academic Vita of Norbert Wiener!
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371 Academic Vita of Norbert Wiener! 1894 Born on November 26 in Columbia, Missouri, to Bertha Kahn Wiener and Leo Wiener, a professor of foreign languages at the University of Missouri. 1895 The family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Leo Wiener became a professor of Slavic languages at Harvard. 1901 Entered the third grade at the Peabody School, but was removed shortly and taught by his father until 1903. 1903 Entered Ayer High School. 1906 Graduated from Ayer High School and entered Tufts College where he studied mathematics and biology. 1909 Received an A.B. degree, cum laude, from Tufts, and entered the Harvard Graduate School to study zoology. 1910 Entered the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University with a scholarship, and studied with Frank Thilly, Walter A. Hammond, and Ernest Albee. 1911 Transferred to the Harvard Graduate School to study philosophy, and studied with E. V. Huntington, Josiah Royce, G.H. Palmer, Kar! Schmidt, and George Santayana. 1912 Received an M.A. degree from Harvard. 1913 Received a Ph.D. degree from Harvard; dissertation under J. Royce, but supervised by K. Schmidt of Tufts College. Appointed a John Thornton Kirkland Fellow by Harvard, and entered Cambridge University. Studied logic and philosophy with Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, and J.M.E. McTaggart, and mathematics with G.H. Hardy and J.E. Littlewood. 1914 Joined the University of Gottingen and took the courses of David Hilbert, Edmund Husser!, and Edmund Landau. Appointed a Frederick Sheldon Fellow by Harvard; returned to Cam bridge University to study mathematics and philosophy. Received the Bowdoin Prize from Harvard. 1915 Studied philosophy under John Dewey at Columbia University. Appointed an assistant and a docent lecturer in Harvard's Philosophy Department for 1915-1916, and lectured on the logic of geometry. 1916 Served with Harvard's reserve regiment at the Officer's Training Camp in Plattsburg, N.Y. Appointed instructor of mathematics at the University of Maine in Orono for 1916-1917. This data is extracted from the Chronology in the spiral-bound publication entitled the "Inventory of Norbert Wiener, 1894-1964", processed by Mary Jane McCavitt, September 1980. 372 Academic Vita of Norbert Wiener 1917 Served with the Cambridge ROTC; briefly worked as an apprentice engineer in the turbine department of the General Electric Corp. in Lynn, Massachusetts. Appointed a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany, N.Y. 1918 Joined the Aberdeen, Proving Grounds of the U.S. Army under O. Veblen, and worked on computations of ballistic tables. Joined the American Mathematical Society. 1919 Served as an Army private at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, Mary land. Worked as a journalist with The Boston Herald. Appointed instructor of mathematics at MIT. 1920 Attended the International Mathematical Congress in Strasbourg as MIT's representative and presented a paper on Brownian motion. He also visited Cambridge and Paris. 1924 Appointed assistant professor of mathematics at MIT. 1925 Attended the International Mathematical Congress in Grenoble and the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Southampton; visited Gi:ittingen University. 1926 Elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Married Marguerite Engemann. Received a Guggenheim Fellowship to study in Gi:ittingen and in Copenhagen during 1926-1927. Collaborated with Harald Bohr, and taught a course of general trigonometric developments at Gi:ittingen. 1928 Addressed the Symposium on Analysis Situs of the American Math ematical Society. 1929 Appointed associate professor of mathematics at MIT. Lectured at Brown University as exchange professor during 1929-1930. 1931-1932 Visiting lecturer at Cambridge University; lectured on the Fourier integral and its applications at Trinity College. Appointed professor of mathematics at MIT. Attended the International Congress of Mathematics, Zurich, as MIT's representative. 1933 Awarded Bocher Prize by the American Mathematical Society. EleCted to the National Academy of Sciences. Began participation in the interdisciplinary seminar at Harvard Medical School under Arturo Rosenblueth. Collaborated with REAC. Paley. 1934 Delivered the AMS Colloquium Lectures at Williamston, Massa chusetts. 1935 Patented electrical network systems with Yuk Wing Lee. (Two more patents were issued in 1938.) Lectured at Stanford University and in Japan on his way to China. Visiting professor at Tsing Hua University in Peiping, China, during 1935-1936. 1936 Attended the International Congress of Mathematicians in Oslo, Nor way, and lectured on Tauberian gap theorems. Collaborated with Harry Ray Pitt at MIT during 1936-1937. 1937 Delivered the Dohme lecture at Johns Hopkins University on Tauberian theorems. 1938 Lectured on analysis at the semicentennial of the AMS. 1940 Appointed chief consultant in the field of mechanical and electrical aids to computation for the National Defense Research Committee. Academic Vita of Norbert Wiener 373 Consultant with the NDRC's Office of Scientific Research and De velopment, Statistical Research Group and Operational Research Lab oratory at Columbia University. Consultant to the War-Preparedness Committee of the American Mathematical Society. Joined a team at MIT under S. H. Caldwell to study the guidance and control of antiaircraft fire. Worked on the theory and design of fire control apparatus for anti aircraft guns with Julian Bigelow, under NDRC Project. 1941 Resigned from the National Academy of Sciences. 1945 Participated in a study group set up by John von Neumann, and attended a meeting on communication theory in Princeton. Collaborated with Arturo Rosenblueth at the Instituto National Car diologia in Mexico, and attended the Mexican Mathematical Society's Conference held in Guadalajara. 1946-1950 With Arturo Rosenblueth received a five-year Rockefeller Foundation grant that allowed them to collaborate in Mexico and at MIT on alternating years. 1946 Received an honorary Sc.D. degree from Tufts College. Attended the first three Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation Conferences and the Conference on Teleological Mechanisms sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences. Lectured at the National University of Mexico. 1947 Visited England and France, and gave lectures on harmonic analysis in Nancy, France. 1948 Spoke at the AMS's Second Symposium on Applied Mathematics. 1949 Received the Lord & Taylor American Design Award. Delivered the AMS's Josiah Willard Gibbs Lecture at the annual meeting. 1950 Attended the seventh Macy conference. Lectured at the International Congress of Mathematicians at Harvard University. 1951 Lectured at the University of Paris, College de France, under a Ful bright Teaching Fellowship, and also lectured in Madrid. Received an honorary Sc.D. degree from the University of Mexico. 1952 Received the Alvarega Prize from the College of Physicians III Philadelphia. Delivered the Forbes-Hawks Lectures at the University of Miami. 1953 Lectured on the theory of prediction at the University of California at Los Angeles. Taught a summer school course with Claude Shannon and Robert Fano on the mathematical problems of communications theory. 1953~1954 Lectured at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay, attended the All-India Science Congress, and visited research centers. 1955~1956 Visiting professor at the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta. 1956 Lectured in Japan and gave a summer school course at UCLA. 1957 Received an honorary Sc.D. degree from Grinnell College. Awarded the Virchow Medal from the RudolfVirchow Medical Soci ety. 1959 Gave a summer school course at UCLA. Appointed institute professor at MIT. 1960 Lectured at the University of Naples in Italy, and visited the USSR. 374 Academic Vita of Norbert Wiener Received the ASTME Research Medal. Retired from MIT, and appointed institute professor emeritus. 1961 Gave a summer school course at UCLA. 1962 Lectured at the Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Naples, Italy. Delivered the Terry Lectures at Yale University, titled "Prolegomena to Theology". 1963 Gave a summer school course at UCLA. 1964 Received the National Medal of Science from President Johnson. 1964 Visiting professor and honorary head of neurocybernetics at Nether lands Central Institute for Brain Research, Amsterdam. Lectured in Norway and Sweden. Died on March 18 in Stockholm, Sweden. 375 Doctoral Students of Norbert Wiener! Shikao Ikehara Ph.D. 1930 Sebastian Littauer Sc.D. 1930 Dorothy W. Weeks Ph.D. 1930 James G. Estes Ph.D. 1933 Norman Levinson Sc.D. 1935 Henry Malin Ph.D. 1935 Bernard Friedman Ph.D. 1936 Brockway McMillan Ph.D. 1939 Abe M. Gelbart Ph.D. 1940 Donald G. Brennan Ph.D. 1959 1 Reprinted with the kind permission of Professor Irving Ezra Segal of MIT. 376 The Classification of Wiener's Papers Mathematical Papers A Mathematical philosophy and foundations B Potential theory C Brownian movement, Wiener integrals, ergodic and chaos theories, tur bulence and statistical mechanics D Generalized harmonic analysis and Tauberian theory E Classical harmonic and complex analysis (orthogonal developments, quasi-analyticity, gap theorems, and Fourier transforms in the complex domain) F Hopf-Wiener integral equations G Prediction and filtering H Relativity and quantum theories I Miscellaneous mathematical papers II Cybernetical and Philosophical Papers A Philosophical papers B Cybernetical papers III Social, Ethical, Educational, and Literary papers IV Book Reviews, Prefaces, and Obituaries A Book reviews