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Idea Makers: Personal Perspectives on the Lives & Ideas of Some Notable People
This book of thoroughly engaging essays from one of today's most prodigious innovators provides a uniquely personal perspective on the lives and achievements of a selection of intriguing figures from the history of science and technology. Weaving together his immersive interest in people and history with insights gathered from his own experiences, Stephen Wolfram gives an ennobling look at some of the individuals whose ideas and creations have helped shape our world today.
From his recollections about working with Richard Feynman to his insights about how Alan Turing's work has unleashed generations of innovation to the true role of Ada Lovelace in the history of computing, Wolfram takes the reader into the minds and lives of great thinkers and creators of the past few centuries and shows how great achievements can arise from dramatically different personalities and life trajectories.
Preface
Richard Feynman
Kurt Gödel
Alan Turing
John von Neumann
George Boole
Ada Lovelace
Gottfried Leibniz
Benoit Mandelbrot
Steve Jobs
Marvin Minsky
Russell Towle
Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead
Richard Crandall
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Solomon Golomb
From his recollections about working with Richard Feynman to his insights about how Alan Turing's work has unleashed generations of innovation to the true role of Ada Lovelace in the history of computing, Wolfram takes the reader into the minds and lives of great thinkers and creators of the past few centuries and shows how great achievements can arise from dramatically different personalities and life trajectories.
Preface
Richard Feynman
Kurt Gödel
Alan Turing
John von Neumann
George Boole
Ada Lovelace
Gottfried Leibniz
Benoit Mandelbrot
Steve Jobs
Marvin Minsky
Russell Towle
Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead
Richard Crandall
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Solomon Golomb
250 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 2016
About the author
Stephen Wolfram
39 books383 followersStephen Wolfram's parents were Jewish refugees who emigrated from Germany to England in the 1930s. Wolfram's father Hugo was a textile manufacturer and novelist (Into a Neutral Country) and his mother Sybil was a professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford. He has a younger brother, Conrad. Wolfram is married to a mathematician and has four children.
He was educated at Eton College, but claimed to be bored and left it prematurely in 1976. He entered St John's College, Oxford at age 17 but found lectures "awful", and left in 1978 without graduating. He received a Ph.D. in particle physics from the California Institute of Technology at age 20,[8] joined the faculty there and received one of the first MacArthur awards in 1981, at age 21.
Wolfram presented a talk at the TED conference in 2010, and he was named Speaker of the Event for his 2012 talk at SXSW. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
He was educated at Eton College, but claimed to be bored and left it prematurely in 1976. He entered St John's College, Oxford at age 17 but found lectures "awful", and left in 1978 without graduating. He received a Ph.D. in particle physics from the California Institute of Technology at age 20,[8] joined the faculty there and received one of the first MacArthur awards in 1981, at age 21.
Wolfram presented a talk at the TED conference in 2010, and he was named Speaker of the Event for his 2012 talk at SXSW. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 67 reviews
July 27, 2016
Stunningly boring and overloaded with Wolfram's self-admiration.
The book is also plagued with repetetiveness: words "Mathematica", "Cellular automata", "Universal computation", and, of course, "Wolfram" flickered fast enough to give a poor reader a seizure.
Perhaps reading these essays one at a time would be somewhat okay, but compiling them into a book was a fatal decision.
The book is also plagued with repetetiveness: words "Mathematica", "Cellular automata", "Universal computation", and, of course, "Wolfram" flickered fast enough to give a poor reader a seizure.
Perhaps reading these essays one at a time would be somewhat okay, but compiling them into a book was a fatal decision.
July 24, 2016
Stephen Wolfram didn't want to wait until some journalist write a book about how his work extends or even completes the work of past luminaries. So he wrote it.
Which is actually not a problem. For one thing, it might be the case that Wolfram's results in different areas of research really extend the field of computational mathematics or even define the basis of a computational model of the universe. Who can really know.
What matters is that the book is enjoyable and offers a unique approach to life and work of many of the most important minds that built the main concepts around computability. As he places himself in a rather particular position, as a continuist of others' work, the perspective he offers is intellectually intimate. That makes this book unique.
I particularly enjoyed the strong presence and relevance that (mathematical) intuition has in these biographical essays, specially in Lovelace and Ramanujan cases. Wolfram is an expert in 'constructive mathematics', in computational (and thus extremely fast) ways to derive new mathematical results from previous ones. He can't help but wonder how, sometimes, creative (or even aesthetic) mathematicians can arrive to wonderful results without –apparently, consciously– having build a path to get there!
Which is actually not a problem. For one thing, it might be the case that Wolfram's results in different areas of research really extend the field of computational mathematics or even define the basis of a computational model of the universe. Who can really know.
What matters is that the book is enjoyable and offers a unique approach to life and work of many of the most important minds that built the main concepts around computability. As he places himself in a rather particular position, as a continuist of others' work, the perspective he offers is intellectually intimate. That makes this book unique.
I particularly enjoyed the strong presence and relevance that (mathematical) intuition has in these biographical essays, specially in Lovelace and Ramanujan cases. Wolfram is an expert in 'constructive mathematics', in computational (and thus extremely fast) ways to derive new mathematical results from previous ones. He can't help but wonder how, sometimes, creative (or even aesthetic) mathematicians can arrive to wonderful results without –apparently, consciously– having build a path to get there!
October 18, 2020
I'm halfway through Idea Makers by Stephen Wolfram, but I think I need a break from it. The book is thin enough to finish in a day or two (~ 230 pages), and Wolfram is clearly an interesting person. But he also appears to be in love with himself, and seems out to burnish his own reputation as a (gasp) thought leader in mathematical philosophy, comparing himself favorably to Leibniz, Ada Lovelace, and even Feynman. This shameless plugging is pretty unbearable, and despite the interesting collection of luminaries featured, it is stomach churning stuff.
Edit, Oct 2020: I finally finished the book, and while I still stand by my previous comments regarding his self-promotion, Wolfram does tell much better stories in the longer accounts, and refers to himself a lot less. For that, I have to give him an extra star.
Edit, Oct 2020: I finally finished the book, and while I still stand by my previous comments regarding his self-promotion, Wolfram does tell much better stories in the longer accounts, and refers to himself a lot less. For that, I have to give him an extra star.
September 11, 2016
I think it's the fact that wolfram himself could and should be one of the characters of his book, that makes this collection of eulogies to the likes of Ada Lovelace, Solomon Golomb, Ramanujan and Marvin Minsky read in such a powerful and entertaining way.
Idea makers has quite an interesting mixture of personal anecdotes (feynman, jobs, minsky, etc...) and detail historical recollections of some of the worlds greatest doers.
Idea makers has quite an interesting mixture of personal anecdotes (feynman, jobs, minsky, etc...) and detail historical recollections of some of the worlds greatest doers.
October 22, 2016
This is a series of short biographies of various men (and one woman) who made significant contributions to math/computer science. Unfortunately the book has two major flaws. First the author (Wolfram of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha) inserts himself into nearly every biography. While this is sometimes appropriate, often it is not. (e.g. Think what famous-mathematician of two hundred years ago could have done if he only had had access to my tool, Mathematica). Second the discussions of specific computer tools or techniques assumed that the reader had a much more in-depth knowledge of these things than is probably the case. Those discussions should have either been eliminated or the book should have been expanded to include a LOT more background material. I am pretty literate in these areas but I still found myself lost and unwilling to do the hours of outside research necessary for a good understanding of the text.
July 1, 2016
IDEA MAKERS is a fun read about many famous figures--many of whom were mathematicians. Some of them the author met, but many have been gone for years. The author is clear, right from the start, that this isn't any type of systematic overview of great men of science. Rather, it's his thoughts on people that have caught his interest for many different reasons.
Notice that the subtitle is "Personal Perspectives on the Lives and Ideas of Some Notable People." So, although this book has many discussions on mathematics, it's not so much a science book, as a PEOPLE book.
Dr. Wolfram makes an interesting autobiographical point about his interest: He's not just interested in the science--he's also interested in the people themselves: "There's a stereotype that someone focused on science and technology won't be interested in people. But that's not me. I've always been interested in people." True to this statement, the author gives quite a bit of detail about the person--not just the science, in each of these essays.
The author has also grown in his appreciate of history. Sometimes for selfish reasons, he admits: "What can I learn from historical examples about how things I'm involved with now will work out. How can I use people from the past as models for people I know now. What can I learn for my own life from what these people did in their lives?"
The author offers some unique insights on the subjects of this book. On Steve Jobs, Wolfram suggests Jobs was exceptional for his "clarify of thought. Over and over again, he took complex situations, understood their essence, and used that understanding to make a bold definitive move, often in a completely unexpected direction."
Wow--I would never have associated "clarify of thought" with Steve Jobs, but I appreciate the author's perspective on this.
In many of the essays, the author makes a connection to his famous product, Mathematica. For example, when discussing Steve Jobs, Dr. Wolfram mentions how Jobs packaged up Mathematica in the cutting edge "NeXT" computer system. (I think we readers may forgive the author for frequently mentioning his brainchild.)
In IDEA MAKERS, I also stumbled across some interesting facts. I had no idea, for example that "Boolean Logic" originated with George Boole. Dr. Wolfram points out that Boole made the formal connection between mathematics and logic.
So all in all, I found IDEA MAKERS to be an interesting, pleasant read. Not all the essays are equally interesting--I found those on recent figures more captivating than those on older figures. I suspect that many readers will jump on the Jobs essay first. Dr. Wolfram writes clearly in each essay, giving the reader a little taste of the greatness of these towering figures. Given his expertise in physics and mathematics the author offers both a wide and deep perspective to the discussion.
Advanced Review Copy courtesy of the publisher.
Notice that the subtitle is "Personal Perspectives on the Lives and Ideas of Some Notable People." So, although this book has many discussions on mathematics, it's not so much a science book, as a PEOPLE book.
Dr. Wolfram makes an interesting autobiographical point about his interest: He's not just interested in the science--he's also interested in the people themselves: "There's a stereotype that someone focused on science and technology won't be interested in people. But that's not me. I've always been interested in people." True to this statement, the author gives quite a bit of detail about the person--not just the science, in each of these essays.
The author has also grown in his appreciate of history. Sometimes for selfish reasons, he admits: "What can I learn from historical examples about how things I'm involved with now will work out. How can I use people from the past as models for people I know now. What can I learn for my own life from what these people did in their lives?"
The author offers some unique insights on the subjects of this book. On Steve Jobs, Wolfram suggests Jobs was exceptional for his "clarify of thought. Over and over again, he took complex situations, understood their essence, and used that understanding to make a bold definitive move, often in a completely unexpected direction."
Wow--I would never have associated "clarify of thought" with Steve Jobs, but I appreciate the author's perspective on this.
In many of the essays, the author makes a connection to his famous product, Mathematica. For example, when discussing Steve Jobs, Dr. Wolfram mentions how Jobs packaged up Mathematica in the cutting edge "NeXT" computer system. (I think we readers may forgive the author for frequently mentioning his brainchild.)
In IDEA MAKERS, I also stumbled across some interesting facts. I had no idea, for example that "Boolean Logic" originated with George Boole. Dr. Wolfram points out that Boole made the formal connection between mathematics and logic.
So all in all, I found IDEA MAKERS to be an interesting, pleasant read. Not all the essays are equally interesting--I found those on recent figures more captivating than those on older figures. I suspect that many readers will jump on the Jobs essay first. Dr. Wolfram writes clearly in each essay, giving the reader a little taste of the greatness of these towering figures. Given his expertise in physics and mathematics the author offers both a wide and deep perspective to the discussion.
Advanced Review Copy courtesy of the publisher.
February 10, 2018
This book captures the views of the author on the lives and work of some of the best innovators. The author has done an excellent job in selecting the innovators. He has also done good amount of research on the work and lives of the persons. Some of his insights are good.
But there are a few problems with the narrative. First it is a personal perspective and some of the views are very biased and not appropriate for wider audience. The content is full of self-admiration of the author and his work. Often the self-admiration over shadows the work of the innovators in the narrative. The author has not tried to simplify the content for wider audience. The author has done a fantastic job in explaining the work of the innovators in areas where the author has good grasp. But the other aspects of the innovators' work are ignored. Many of the images included in the book are not readable and some are unnecessary.
But there are a few problems with the narrative. First it is a personal perspective and some of the views are very biased and not appropriate for wider audience. The content is full of self-admiration of the author and his work. Often the self-admiration over shadows the work of the innovators in the narrative. The author has not tried to simplify the content for wider audience. The author has done a fantastic job in explaining the work of the innovators in areas where the author has good grasp. But the other aspects of the innovators' work are ignored. Many of the images included in the book are not readable and some are unnecessary.
November 22, 2016
Idea Makers was an enjoyable read. It gives a unique perspective on a number of notable thinkers in the fields of mathematics and computer science. It shows how these towering figures worked relentlessly for at least two hundred years, if not more, just to come up with a mechanical analytical machine (essentially a primitive calculator), a precursor to today's modern computers. We are indeed standing on the shoulders of giants. However, having used the author's outstanding creation, an engineering mathematical software tool Mathematica many years ago as an engineering student, I utterly had a much higher expectation from the author. Hence only four stars!
December 17, 2017
Have you ever wondered what various famous mathematicians would have thought of Mathematica? Or asked yourself how their work anticipated Wolfram Alpha? Or mused on how they had a rough inkling of what Wolfram was getting at in A New Kind of Science?
Well, if you haven’t wondered these things, rest assured: Stephen Wolfram has, and he will tell you.
These stories work way better as blog posts by someone showing off his (legitimately very impressive) software. But as a book? Nah.
Well, if you haven’t wondered these things, rest assured: Stephen Wolfram has, and he will tell you.
These stories work way better as blog posts by someone showing off his (legitimately very impressive) software. But as a book? Nah.
Read
August 20, 2023Was overall an interesting book that I feel I learned a lot from.
It consists of a few accounts of notable figures and basically short expositions of their lives and achievements especially in relation to “universal computation”.
But I did notice that there’s a lack of diversity in the accounts chosen.
Though the Ada Lovelace account was rather endearing as well as the Ramanujan one, I still felt like there was a lack in diversity.
Some parts undoubtedly were over my head such as the exposition of “shift registers” in the last chapter.
However, the book was in general nicely written and on topics I like, so I was entirely engrossed in it.
I especially loved the included pictures from the archives of the scientists’ papers and work.
Though I must note that the book seemed to lack a solid theme and is not entirely devoid of bias.
It consists of a few accounts of notable figures and basically short expositions of their lives and achievements especially in relation to “universal computation”.
But I did notice that there’s a lack of diversity in the accounts chosen.
Though the Ada Lovelace account was rather endearing as well as the Ramanujan one, I still felt like there was a lack in diversity.
Some parts undoubtedly were over my head such as the exposition of “shift registers” in the last chapter.
However, the book was in general nicely written and on topics I like, so I was entirely engrossed in it.
I especially loved the included pictures from the archives of the scientists’ papers and work.
Though I must note that the book seemed to lack a solid theme and is not entirely devoid of bias.
August 23, 2020
I've always found it easier to remember technical concepts when told as part of a story. That is, it's helpful to put discoveries in the context of the scientific environment and the context of the authors' lives. As Wolfram puts it:
> [...] ideas arise out of the context of people’s lives. Indeed, more often than not, it’s a very practical situation that someone finds themselves in that leads them to create some strong, new, abstract idea.
So I was excited to read this book, which covers the big ideas of a couple dozen scientists. Wolfram's been lucky to have his career intersect with many of them (through CalTech, Wolfram Research, etc.), and his personal anecdotes certainly add valuable color to the book.
However, most chapters turned out shorter than I'd have liked to gain a full appreciation of the scientists' contributions. Moreover, Wolfram has an unfortunate habit of presenting the ideas of each biographical subject in the light of his own ideas in A New Kind of Science (on cellular automata and the like). The tone comes off as smug and this can be annoying -- for example, when he speculates at length upon whether Leibniz and von Neumann could have eventually come up with his own idea of "exploring the computational universe".
The most interesting chapters are those on Richard Feynman, Ada Lovelace, Srinivasa Ramanujan, and Solomon Golomb. They're well worth a read -- there are memorable anecdotes on Feynman's eccentricities, Lovelace's analogy between the Analytic Engine and the Jacquard Loom, and Golomb's introduction to Wolfram through his daughters. The writing style is conversational, making it easy to follow. You can find these chapters on Wolfram's blog for free though; there's no need to buy this book.
> [...] ideas arise out of the context of people’s lives. Indeed, more often than not, it’s a very practical situation that someone finds themselves in that leads them to create some strong, new, abstract idea.
So I was excited to read this book, which covers the big ideas of a couple dozen scientists. Wolfram's been lucky to have his career intersect with many of them (through CalTech, Wolfram Research, etc.), and his personal anecdotes certainly add valuable color to the book.
However, most chapters turned out shorter than I'd have liked to gain a full appreciation of the scientists' contributions. Moreover, Wolfram has an unfortunate habit of presenting the ideas of each biographical subject in the light of his own ideas in A New Kind of Science (on cellular automata and the like). The tone comes off as smug and this can be annoying -- for example, when he speculates at length upon whether Leibniz and von Neumann could have eventually come up with his own idea of "exploring the computational universe".
The most interesting chapters are those on Richard Feynman, Ada Lovelace, Srinivasa Ramanujan, and Solomon Golomb. They're well worth a read -- there are memorable anecdotes on Feynman's eccentricities, Lovelace's analogy between the Analytic Engine and the Jacquard Loom, and Golomb's introduction to Wolfram through his daughters. The writing style is conversational, making it easy to follow. You can find these chapters on Wolfram's blog for free though; there's no need to buy this book.
December 26, 2017
A few compelling stories but overall not remarkable.
October 21, 2016
I recently had the pleasure of reading a new release from the desk of Stephen Wolfram — Idea Makers. The book is structured as a collection of biographical blog posts about scientific luminaries and notables from the fields of the author’s interest including physics, computer science, and mathematics. It is a good rule of thumb to filter one’s reading material based on the Lindy effect — any book that is still talked about 10 years after publishing may only then known to be worth picking up. I recommend the works of this author as an exception to the rule, for the problem with relying on the Lindy effect for selection of reading material is that one may miss out on modern transformational works (such as A New Kind of Science certainly was).
As would be expected for biographical works, the subjects in question are selected for their extraordinary contributions to their field . It is common for people of exception to get placed on a pedestal. I imagine the desire for recognition — the wish for a Nobel or Pulitzer Prize — serves a useful function as an incentive to motivate those who toil and sacrifice in relative obscurity for the generally thankless, challenging, and lets face mostly underpaid fields of research and discovery. For those few who do climb the mountain of contribution, a very different life may await. Celebrity worship, the tendency for the crowd to grant special attention or affection to those of accomplishment or notoriety, has a certain network effect about it. Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd, and it is thus the case that those who get the most attention may not always deserve it .
The value of a book like Idea Makers is that it allows you to turn your focus to those of accomplishment who truly deserve your precious currency of attention, for their efforts have improved our lives probably more than we know. We live in an age where the heroes around us (both real and artificial) are surprisingly accessible, unfortunately to the point where they may drown out those more potentially meaningful connections with our peers. Through new channels of media we suddenly find unfettered real time access to the thoughts or promotions of the elite draining the hours of our day. Presidential candidates roll out their own online news network for 24/7 dissemination of vitriol and propaganda of demagoguery. Artists and authors manage facebook communities with their own branded echo chambers of adoration. And then there’s my personal favorite, the twitter “micro-blog” elite, where so little is said so much and staccato blurbs and barbs are traded as if they were or could even ever be true debate. The value of social media, that of making connections and firming ties, is greatly diminished as our feeds are encroached by celebrity. The problem with filling your twitter feed with these “thought leader” giants of >10,000 followers is that your potential for dialogue is effectively zero. The goal should be to build a community of those you admire who have not gone mainstream so that you can actually share meaningful dialogue. This problem of identifying potential connections not just of similar interests or adjacent networks but who may actually have desire to interact is one that neither twitter or facebook has put enough effort to solving.
The scientists covered in Idea Makers each had their own mountain to climb, and along the way made some impact on our world far beyond that of any celebrity, recognition by the public or otherwise. Richard Feynman probably achieved the most recognition of those discussed here, for in his public talks (often transformed into successful books) he won the hearts of the general public through irreverent anecdotes and lessons, provided leaderships in fields such as Quantum Electro Dynamics and Computer Science, paved the way for new fields still being explored today such as nanotechnology or quantum computation, taught physics to whole generations of new students through his introductory lectures, and of course found his one fundamental discovery of path integral formulation of quantum mechanics along the way.
Feynman’s celebrity was the result of and perhaps (depending on your view) reward for his work as a physicist. For some others the mantle of recognition may be thrust on them not by their own achievements but instead by circumstance. Ada Lovelace was born into notoriety as the child of the famed poet Lord Byron.
Oh, nature’s noblest gift, my grey goose quill, Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will, Torn from the parent bird to form a pen, That mighty instrument of little men. — Lord Byron
One can’t help but wonder how the public’s eye may have shaped her path. In her journey to becoming the first computer programmer, one can almost imagine a motivation to escape her father’s legacy present in her collaboration with Babbage, for what could be more divergent than the path of a technical writer documenting Babbage’s difference engine. And yet it is fitting that it was through her own quill that she managed to create a legacy of her own, perhaps more like her father than even she envisioned. For in her transformation of the notes of Babbage into prose more digestible for the greater public there surely must have been an element of poetry or at least word-smithery at play. I find it fitting that computer programming was thus born from the hand of not an engineer but instead a technical writer — one who would later go on to be CEO. In the tradition of Hofstader’s Gödel Escher Bach, it was in the synthesis of the art of poetry in her technical writing and the mechanics of the engineer that the unique voice of a programer was born (for at their best poetry and technical writing are both the clearest forms of communication), and today the name of Lovelace is primarily known for Ada, not for Byron.
There are some idea makers who in their lifetime never receive their deserved attention, Srinivasa Ramanujan was one. As a self taught mathematician his knowledge base and methods of practice were quite different than his contemporaries. Living in poverty and obscurity, he was only discovered by the power of his pen, in this case the letters he shared to seemingly random professors coupled with pages from his notebooks of work. These notebooks were a true treasure and even today are still being dissected for the hidden truths that they contain. In the words of Wolfram: “Ramanujan was surely a great human calculator, and impressive at knowing whether a particular mathematical fact for relation was actually true. But his greatest skill was, I think, something in a sense more mysterious: an uncanny ability to tell what was significant, and what might be deduced from it.” I think it fair to say that in this gift there was a certain element of the artist’s intuition at play.
It would be easy to assign the idea makers in this book labels like “genius” or the like, but I notice the author never does. I suspect he’s probably had his share of people throw praise of that nature his way, but is fortunate enough to have visibility of the full community of the thinking class to see that there may be more scientists of this caliber in practice than the public realizes. For every Alan Turing that is eventually brought forward and celebrated in the public there must be at least a few more working behind the curtain of obscurity, perhaps with some local recognition of their peers but little else in the way of public knowledge. That is not to say the extent of intelligence and talent of those profiled here are not extraordinary, but perhaps there was a little good fortune at play at times — having the right background or being in the right place at the right time for their discoveries — for science and discovery must certainly fall at a point on the luck-skill continuum just like any other game. I think it is entirely possibly that many of us may even cross paths with some of these more obscure idea makers from time to time — the passing hello as we cross the street, the shared meal in the cafeteria, the speakers in a conference session, the joint spectators of a coding competition — we’ll never really know just who we really have crossed paths with without doing a little biographical investigation of our own. In the end it is certainly a mistake to focus all of our attention on those who reach the notoriety of achievement, for then we lose out on the more accessible connections of our peers and contemporaries.
As would be expected for biographical works, the subjects in question are selected for their extraordinary contributions to their field . It is common for people of exception to get placed on a pedestal. I imagine the desire for recognition — the wish for a Nobel or Pulitzer Prize — serves a useful function as an incentive to motivate those who toil and sacrifice in relative obscurity for the generally thankless, challenging, and lets face mostly underpaid fields of research and discovery. For those few who do climb the mountain of contribution, a very different life may await. Celebrity worship, the tendency for the crowd to grant special attention or affection to those of accomplishment or notoriety, has a certain network effect about it. Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd, and it is thus the case that those who get the most attention may not always deserve it .
The value of a book like Idea Makers is that it allows you to turn your focus to those of accomplishment who truly deserve your precious currency of attention, for their efforts have improved our lives probably more than we know. We live in an age where the heroes around us (both real and artificial) are surprisingly accessible, unfortunately to the point where they may drown out those more potentially meaningful connections with our peers. Through new channels of media we suddenly find unfettered real time access to the thoughts or promotions of the elite draining the hours of our day. Presidential candidates roll out their own online news network for 24/7 dissemination of vitriol and propaganda of demagoguery. Artists and authors manage facebook communities with their own branded echo chambers of adoration. And then there’s my personal favorite, the twitter “micro-blog” elite, where so little is said so much and staccato blurbs and barbs are traded as if they were or could even ever be true debate. The value of social media, that of making connections and firming ties, is greatly diminished as our feeds are encroached by celebrity. The problem with filling your twitter feed with these “thought leader” giants of >10,000 followers is that your potential for dialogue is effectively zero. The goal should be to build a community of those you admire who have not gone mainstream so that you can actually share meaningful dialogue. This problem of identifying potential connections not just of similar interests or adjacent networks but who may actually have desire to interact is one that neither twitter or facebook has put enough effort to solving.
The scientists covered in Idea Makers each had their own mountain to climb, and along the way made some impact on our world far beyond that of any celebrity, recognition by the public or otherwise. Richard Feynman probably achieved the most recognition of those discussed here, for in his public talks (often transformed into successful books) he won the hearts of the general public through irreverent anecdotes and lessons, provided leaderships in fields such as Quantum Electro Dynamics and Computer Science, paved the way for new fields still being explored today such as nanotechnology or quantum computation, taught physics to whole generations of new students through his introductory lectures, and of course found his one fundamental discovery of path integral formulation of quantum mechanics along the way.
Feynman’s celebrity was the result of and perhaps (depending on your view) reward for his work as a physicist. For some others the mantle of recognition may be thrust on them not by their own achievements but instead by circumstance. Ada Lovelace was born into notoriety as the child of the famed poet Lord Byron.
Oh, nature’s noblest gift, my grey goose quill, Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will, Torn from the parent bird to form a pen, That mighty instrument of little men. — Lord Byron
One can’t help but wonder how the public’s eye may have shaped her path. In her journey to becoming the first computer programmer, one can almost imagine a motivation to escape her father’s legacy present in her collaboration with Babbage, for what could be more divergent than the path of a technical writer documenting Babbage’s difference engine. And yet it is fitting that it was through her own quill that she managed to create a legacy of her own, perhaps more like her father than even she envisioned. For in her transformation of the notes of Babbage into prose more digestible for the greater public there surely must have been an element of poetry or at least word-smithery at play. I find it fitting that computer programming was thus born from the hand of not an engineer but instead a technical writer — one who would later go on to be CEO. In the tradition of Hofstader’s Gödel Escher Bach, it was in the synthesis of the art of poetry in her technical writing and the mechanics of the engineer that the unique voice of a programer was born (for at their best poetry and technical writing are both the clearest forms of communication), and today the name of Lovelace is primarily known for Ada, not for Byron.
There are some idea makers who in their lifetime never receive their deserved attention, Srinivasa Ramanujan was one. As a self taught mathematician his knowledge base and methods of practice were quite different than his contemporaries. Living in poverty and obscurity, he was only discovered by the power of his pen, in this case the letters he shared to seemingly random professors coupled with pages from his notebooks of work. These notebooks were a true treasure and even today are still being dissected for the hidden truths that they contain. In the words of Wolfram: “Ramanujan was surely a great human calculator, and impressive at knowing whether a particular mathematical fact for relation was actually true. But his greatest skill was, I think, something in a sense more mysterious: an uncanny ability to tell what was significant, and what might be deduced from it.” I think it fair to say that in this gift there was a certain element of the artist’s intuition at play.
It would be easy to assign the idea makers in this book labels like “genius” or the like, but I notice the author never does. I suspect he’s probably had his share of people throw praise of that nature his way, but is fortunate enough to have visibility of the full community of the thinking class to see that there may be more scientists of this caliber in practice than the public realizes. For every Alan Turing that is eventually brought forward and celebrated in the public there must be at least a few more working behind the curtain of obscurity, perhaps with some local recognition of their peers but little else in the way of public knowledge. That is not to say the extent of intelligence and talent of those profiled here are not extraordinary, but perhaps there was a little good fortune at play at times — having the right background or being in the right place at the right time for their discoveries — for science and discovery must certainly fall at a point on the luck-skill continuum just like any other game. I think it is entirely possibly that many of us may even cross paths with some of these more obscure idea makers from time to time — the passing hello as we cross the street, the shared meal in the cafeteria, the speakers in a conference session, the joint spectators of a coding competition — we’ll never really know just who we really have crossed paths with without doing a little biographical investigation of our own. In the end it is certainly a mistake to focus all of our attention on those who reach the notoriety of achievement, for then we lose out on the more accessible connections of our peers and contemporaries.
September 12, 2021
Wolfram is best known as the creator of Mathematica (an engineering and science software package) and Wolfram|Alpha (web based computational intelligence). His magum opus is “A New Kind of Science”, which I started in 2010 before realizing that my math background was full of too many knowledge gaps to make it enjoyable. I’ll have to give it another try now.
Idea Makers is easily digestible, covering snippets of the lives of some of science’s best. We start with Feynman and his diagrams sitting at dinner with Wolfram and the founder of EST, Werner Erhard. Godel and Turing (Bletchley Park fame) feature predominantly. Godel in 1931, with his “incompleteness theorem” proved that math can’t stand on its own two feet and Turing’s work with universal computation showed essentially what programs could and couldn’t, in principle, do.
Our first taste of cellular automata- simple rules complex behavior- comes with Alphonso Church and his lambda calculus. We then get introduced to Ada Lovelace, who wrote software for Babbage Analytical Engine, a machine that never was quite finished. Interesting though that they borrowed the idea of punch cards from Jacquards loom which had been developed 100 years earlier. Paper punch cards were used till the mid 80’s.
Leibniz is given his moment in the sun but Newton is passed over. Science greats, like Benoit Mandelbrot with his 1975 book on fractals begin to show off the visual complexity that lie within mathematics and Idea Makers wouldn’t be complete without Burton Russel and Alfred Whitehead. Their book, Principe Mathematica, formalized mathematics.
I was not familiar with the last two mathematicians, Srinivasa Ramanujan and Solomon Golomb . Ramanujan was an Indian mathematician who died in 1920 at age 32, before his work with number theory and the distribution of primes would come to dominate the field. This is especially true of his work with special functions (zeta, elliptic, theta) versions of which are being used today in Wolfram|Alpha. Solomon Golomb, wrote the classic book ‘Shift Register Sequences”, which are the most used mathematical algorithms in history, being used in all computers, cell phones, and communication equipment. The work of these two mathematicians, created the breeding ground where cellular automata burst forth with applications in randomness and cryptography besides being necessary for the modern world to exist as it does.
Idea Makers is easily digestible, covering snippets of the lives of some of science’s best. We start with Feynman and his diagrams sitting at dinner with Wolfram and the founder of EST, Werner Erhard. Godel and Turing (Bletchley Park fame) feature predominantly. Godel in 1931, with his “incompleteness theorem” proved that math can’t stand on its own two feet and Turing’s work with universal computation showed essentially what programs could and couldn’t, in principle, do.
Our first taste of cellular automata- simple rules complex behavior- comes with Alphonso Church and his lambda calculus. We then get introduced to Ada Lovelace, who wrote software for Babbage Analytical Engine, a machine that never was quite finished. Interesting though that they borrowed the idea of punch cards from Jacquards loom which had been developed 100 years earlier. Paper punch cards were used till the mid 80’s.
Leibniz is given his moment in the sun but Newton is passed over. Science greats, like Benoit Mandelbrot with his 1975 book on fractals begin to show off the visual complexity that lie within mathematics and Idea Makers wouldn’t be complete without Burton Russel and Alfred Whitehead. Their book, Principe Mathematica, formalized mathematics.
I was not familiar with the last two mathematicians, Srinivasa Ramanujan and Solomon Golomb . Ramanujan was an Indian mathematician who died in 1920 at age 32, before his work with number theory and the distribution of primes would come to dominate the field. This is especially true of his work with special functions (zeta, elliptic, theta) versions of which are being used today in Wolfram|Alpha. Solomon Golomb, wrote the classic book ‘Shift Register Sequences”, which are the most used mathematical algorithms in history, being used in all computers, cell phones, and communication equipment. The work of these two mathematicians, created the breeding ground where cellular automata burst forth with applications in randomness and cryptography besides being necessary for the modern world to exist as it does.
October 4, 2022
No matter how intelligent and successful the author of a book is, any publishing company worth its name will assign her/him an editor.
Sadly this is not the case for this book. Wolfram Media pooled together 15 otherwise good blog posts and the result, considering most people will read it without waiting weeks/months between chapters, is a celebration of Dr. Wolfram’s accomplishments more than anything else. I mean, the guy is entitled to an inflated ego but how many times does he need to remind us of how smart and precocious he was? How many times can we be reminded of his cellular automata, Mathematica, etc before it gets boring?
Also, a decent editor would have pointed out another quite obvious thing: of you include pictures, you need to make them at least big enough that their content can be appreciated. Sadly, that did not happen for the vast majority of the pages taken from old manuscripts and books, for example.
This should have remained a collection of blog posts or it should have been edited thinking more about the readers and less about the writer’s desires.
It is a real pity as there are quite a few good paragraphs.
Sadly this is not the case for this book. Wolfram Media pooled together 15 otherwise good blog posts and the result, considering most people will read it without waiting weeks/months between chapters, is a celebration of Dr. Wolfram’s accomplishments more than anything else. I mean, the guy is entitled to an inflated ego but how many times does he need to remind us of how smart and precocious he was? How many times can we be reminded of his cellular automata, Mathematica, etc before it gets boring?
Also, a decent editor would have pointed out another quite obvious thing: of you include pictures, you need to make them at least big enough that their content can be appreciated. Sadly, that did not happen for the vast majority of the pages taken from old manuscripts and books, for example.
This should have remained a collection of blog posts or it should have been edited thinking more about the readers and less about the writer’s desires.
It is a real pity as there are quite a few good paragraphs.
February 3, 2018
This book is a compilation of blog posts Stephen Wolfram (of Mathematica fame) has written about various scientific personages, either as obituaries or on account of his general interest in them. The pieces are of very uneven length, and of the 15 I found three to be of interest to me.
The essay about Ada Lovelace goes into the historical records to really pin down, factually, what contributions she made to Charles Babbage's early computer, the "Analytical Engine"; it was not so much as his "programmer", as is often said, but rather as the one who first realized, in a limited, 19th-century way, that the machine could be capable of "universal computation".
The assay about Srinivasa Ramanujan breaks less new ground, but does a great job of telling the story of that famous mathematical savant.
The essay about Solomon Golomb introduced me to the interesting idea of linear shift registers, which underly nearly all wired and wireless electronic communication and have interesting mathematical properties.
The other essays either briefly recount personal anncecdotes about the persons in question or attempt to show how, say, Russel and Whitehead had come close-but-not-close-enough to the author's own widely panned theories from A New Kind of Science.
The essay about Ada Lovelace goes into the historical records to really pin down, factually, what contributions she made to Charles Babbage's early computer, the "Analytical Engine"; it was not so much as his "programmer", as is often said, but rather as the one who first realized, in a limited, 19th-century way, that the machine could be capable of "universal computation".
The assay about Srinivasa Ramanujan breaks less new ground, but does a great job of telling the story of that famous mathematical savant.
The essay about Solomon Golomb introduced me to the interesting idea of linear shift registers, which underly nearly all wired and wireless electronic communication and have interesting mathematical properties.
The other essays either briefly recount personal anncecdotes about the persons in question or attempt to show how, say, Russel and Whitehead had come close-but-not-close-enough to the author's own widely panned theories from A New Kind of Science.
March 22, 2021
I rented this book from the library before the pandemic because I was doing a talk on Ada Lovelace. The chapter on Ada is by far the best compact resource I could find on her. I didn't return the book before the library closed for the pandemic, so it's been in my home and I decided finally to read it. It's a fast read and I enjoyed that most of the information is not just what would be stated in a Wikipedia article. However, most of the chapters were flat for me. They lacked enough information on the mathematicians and it mostly consisted of Wolfram's personal anecdotes. I wouldn't have minded the abundance of anecdotes if all of the chapters were as detailed about the lives as the Ada chapter was. The Ramanujan chapter was also quite thorough. So, all in all, I highly recommend the Ada Lovelace, Srinivasa Ramanujan, and Gottfried Leibniz chapters for a quick overview of their lives, but the rest of the chapters should have been more fleshed out.
April 16, 2023
If you were to take the book at face value, you would think that Wolfram is *the* genius of today's world and his products Mathematica and A New Kind of Science the best things that ever happened to humanity. He's too full of himself in this book. Maybe he's earned it, but I don't know - it at least doesn't keep the cringe away when reading.
I would say 3 chapters are worth reading - Feynman, Golomb and Ramanujan. There are some good anecdotes which describes parts of personality not covered in other books. The rest contain more philosophical musings of the concerned scientist (and of course fantasies of how they would have appreciated Wolfram's cellular automation work plus Mathematica) rather than a certain depth to the history itself.
I would say 3 chapters are worth reading - Feynman, Golomb and Ramanujan. There are some good anecdotes which describes parts of personality not covered in other books. The rest contain more philosophical musings of the concerned scientist (and of course fantasies of how they would have appreciated Wolfram's cellular automation work plus Mathematica) rather than a certain depth to the history itself.
September 30, 2023
This consists of a number of interesting short articles on various notable figures. Kurt Godel, Turing, Feynman, Boole, Leibniz, Ada Lovelace and others.
They would have been better without the author's relentless self-aggrandizing. Everything he mentions relates to some project or other of his own. A lot of what they did he did too at a young age and independently. Or so he claims. He does it in all his books and it's always disappointing. Honestly Stephen you have done, and are doing, a lot of good and interesting work. Automata, Graphs and other discrete state systems may not have turned out to be the ultimate theory of everything. Too bad, so sad. Time to get over yourself and move on.
They would have been better without the author's relentless self-aggrandizing. Everything he mentions relates to some project or other of his own. A lot of what they did he did too at a young age and independently. Or so he claims. He does it in all his books and it's always disappointing. Honestly Stephen you have done, and are doing, a lot of good and interesting work. Automata, Graphs and other discrete state systems may not have turned out to be the ultimate theory of everything. Too bad, so sad. Time to get over yourself and move on.
August 31, 2017
An understanding of computational mathematics
Stephen Wolfram is that rare individual who possesses the insights to understand physics, mathematics, and business. His flagship product Mathematica possesses attributes that allow those who learn it well to understand deeper insights to physical phenomena.
His book, Idea Makers, is a digestible form of some of the ideas that allowed Mathematica to be one of the most powerful computational tools on the market.
The book, although slow at the start, delivers a rousing tribute to the many mathematician/physicists that inspired his product.
A great read for anyone who loves mathematical physics and all that it entails.
Stephen Wolfram is that rare individual who possesses the insights to understand physics, mathematics, and business. His flagship product Mathematica possesses attributes that allow those who learn it well to understand deeper insights to physical phenomena.
His book, Idea Makers, is a digestible form of some of the ideas that allowed Mathematica to be one of the most powerful computational tools on the market.
The book, although slow at the start, delivers a rousing tribute to the many mathematician/physicists that inspired his product.
A great read for anyone who loves mathematical physics and all that it entails.
January 2, 2021
Very Interesting and enjoyable
I found this collection of short biographies very interesting and enjoyable to read. Some are much deeper and detailed, while others are more of a simple tribute to a friend. There is also a bit of over self-referencing, even if it’s always within context. As the various biographies were assemble together, it would have been better to put those self references as footnotes, and eventually dedicate a chapter or an appendix to talk about it. In any case, there is a lot to learn by reading this book, and Wolfram’s writing style is wonderful and his capability to explain the subjects is fantastic.
I found this collection of short biographies very interesting and enjoyable to read. Some are much deeper and detailed, while others are more of a simple tribute to a friend. There is also a bit of over self-referencing, even if it’s always within context. As the various biographies were assemble together, it would have been better to put those self references as footnotes, and eventually dedicate a chapter or an appendix to talk about it. In any case, there is a lot to learn by reading this book, and Wolfram’s writing style is wonderful and his capability to explain the subjects is fantastic.
March 10, 2021
Very fun to read. In places I could sense a bit of bias and sort of "boasting" about the author's areas of interest and self-promotion. But, he obviously deserves the praise, even if it comes from him himself :) I liked the proportion of technical vs. personal (sort of a story narrative) in this book. Not too boring to be a technical book and not too exciting to be a fairy tale, just the right proportion to be a realistic book about the author's take on game changing ideas and people behind them. You don't need to agree with all his points to enjoy this book (you don't even need to like Wolfram for that matter!).
July 20, 2021
Vanuit los historisch perspectief op zoek naar het randje van wiskundige berekenbaarheid en het daaraan verwante randje van informatica, zo kom je dus als vanzelf bij Russell, Gödel, Turing … waarbij de auteur veel linkjes legt naar zijn eigen levensinvulling, Mathematica, maar niet zodanig vaak dat het irritant commercieel wordt en ook veel linkjes legt naar zijn andere levensvulling, cellulaire automaten, waarbij het erg knap is dat hij niet één keer ‘the game of life’ noemt ;-).
Twijfel tussen 3 of 4 sterren, 4 omdat het lekker soepel weg leest en interessant is, 3 omdat achteraf het gevoel overheerst dat er meer verbanden gelegd of verder uitgewerkt hadden mogen worden.
Twijfel tussen 3 of 4 sterren, 4 omdat het lekker soepel weg leest en interessant is, 3 omdat achteraf het gevoel overheerst dat er meer verbanden gelegd of verder uitgewerkt hadden mogen worden.
May 18, 2020
Disclaimer: I love reading biographies, memoirs and autobiographies. So I tend to enjoy them a lot and hence they get higher rating.
I think this one is quite underrated. It is a collection of really well written essays. I wish I had read this one when I was 12 years old. Instead of glorifying individuals these essays focus on their work. Written in a very simple language this also makes some of the complex ideas and objectives of idea makers.
I also liked the fact that I could pick this book finish reading an essay for 30 minutes.
I think this one is quite underrated. It is a collection of really well written essays. I wish I had read this one when I was 12 years old. Instead of glorifying individuals these essays focus on their work. Written in a very simple language this also makes some of the complex ideas and objectives of idea makers.
I also liked the fact that I could pick this book finish reading an essay for 30 minutes.
November 15, 2017
This is an interesting book describing fascinating people. However, Wolfram consistently compares each one to himself and points out ways that he had made more progress or the wrong paths they took causing them to oh so closely miss making his own discoveries. I think Wolfram is a smart guy with good ideas but these repeated interjections are intrusive.
March 30, 2018
Okay-ish. More interesting maybe for mathematicians maybe. Some interesting profiles (Feynman, Jobs, Tuning) but the rest to me without value. I don’t care one bit for academic achievement maybe that’s a reason why I did not really like it. Overall a waste of 15€ for me personally. And yes the author has his gigantic ego wrapped in these pages .
May 17, 2018
This book brings to the readers the (human and scientific) the stories of interesting people who have done foundational work in computer science and mathematics: Alan Turing, Feynman, Jon von Neumann, Lady Lovelace, Steve Jobs, Ramanujan, Marvin Minsky, etc...
A very interesting and accessible book.
A very interesting and accessible book.
April 22, 2020
Finished this book after the new year. I think it's a nice broad overview but he seems very focused on people contributing to his own field and there isn't enough pedagogy to actually learn the stuff from this book. Anyway, a quick read probably worth it if you want a quick introduction of more unconventional figures.
June 25, 2020
Interesting book to get a glimpse of the biographies of some of the important people that shaped the field of computer science. I must say however, that I really did not enjoy the self centeredness of Steven Wolfram in this book. I don't doubt for a second his contributions to the sciences, but I find the absence of humbleness appaling.
August 3, 2021
Math personalities and some pressure to like Wolfram more
Relentlessly reframes great mathematicians' work in terms of Wolfram's computational obsessions. I loved the personal stories and eventually came around to see his point… we really can view lots of modern math was striving towards universal computation. Overall, worthwhile and interesting.
Relentlessly reframes great mathematicians' work in terms of Wolfram's computational obsessions. I loved the personal stories and eventually came around to see his point… we really can view lots of modern math was striving towards universal computation. Overall, worthwhile and interesting.
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