Norbert Wiener 18941964

1 Prologue.- A) Americas second Leibniz. B) The difficulties of a biographer. C) Scope and focus. D) Poetry, prose and mathematical symbolism. E) Policy as to mathematical usage.- 2 Count Tolstoy and Wieners Father.- Solomon and Leo Wiener. The gift of tongues. Tolstoyan conversion and arrival in New Orleans. Mutualistic communities in the 1880s. Leos Mark Twain characteristics: the Russian Irishman. Marriage and family. Professorships at Missouri and Harvard.- 3 New England and Wieners Early Training, 19011905.- Norberts Cambridge home. Early biological curiosities. Peabody School and Leos tutelage. The avenger of blood. Infantile maladroitness and threat of myopia. Old Mill Farms and Ayer High School. Love for the democracy of the New England town.- 4 Harvard and Wieners University Training, 19061913.- A) An eleven-year-old freshman at Tufts College. B) A semester in zoology. C) The black year at the Sage school of philosophy. D) The return to Harvard.- 5 Bertrand Russell and Wieners Postdoctoral Years, 19141917.- A) Wieners emancipation. B) The doctrine of types. C) The Tractatus and logical empiricism. D) Wieners philosophical activity. E) Columbia and its word-minded philosopher (1915). F) Harvard and the Docent Lectures (19151916). G) The unpleasant stint in Maine (1916). Note: The Peano postulate system.- 6 World War I and Wieners Military Yearnings.- The young war enthusiast. Futile efforts to enlist in the armed forces. Staff work with the Encyclopedia Americana. Computer at the U.S. Army Proving Grounds. Private in the U.S. Infantry. Fowlersque touch.- 7 From Postulate Systems to the Brownian Motion and Potential Theory.- A) Wiener joins the Massachussetts Institute of Technology. B) The relation of space and geometry to experience [22a]. C) Postulate systems. D) The Brownian motion. E) Theory of the potential. Note 1: Boolean algebra. Note 2: Algebraic field. Note 3: The Brownian movement. Note 4: The Borel terminology. Note 5: Hausdorff dimension.- 8 The Allotment of National Income, Marriage, and Wieners Academic Career.- Slow promotion and resulting competitiveness. Mal-allocation of national income. Margaret Engemann and marriage. Search for positions abroad.- 9 From Communications Engineering to Generalized Harmonic Analysis and Tauberian Theory.- A) Harmonic analysis. B) Heavisides operational calculus [26d, 29c]. C) From power to communications engineering. D) Generalized harmonic analysis. E) Tauberian theory. F) The intensity, coherence and polarization of light. Note 1: A proof of 9A (9). Note 2: Historical remarks. Note 3: Spectral synthesis. Note 4: Conditional Banach spaces.- 10 Max Born and Wieners Thoughts on Quantum Mechanics and Unified Field Theory.- A) The Uncertainty Principle in classical physics. B) The collaboration with Max Born. C) The work with Struik and Vallarta on unified field theory. D) The philosophical interlude. Leibniz and Haldane. E) Quantum theory and the Brownian motion. Hidden-parameters. Note: The mapping M?.- 11 The Collaboration with E. Hopf and R.E.A.C. Paley.- A) Radiative equilibrium in the stars. B) Significance of the Hopf-Wiener equation; causality and analyticity. C) Paley and the Fourier transformation in the complex domain.- 12 Birkhoffs Theorem and the Consolidation of Wieners Ideas on Statistical Physics.- A) The need for ergodicity in Gibbsian statistical mechanics. B) Wieners work in Ergodic Theory. C) The contingent cosmos, noise, and Gibbsian statistical mechanics. D) The Second Law of Thermodynamics. Entropy. E) The homogeneous chaos and the Wiener program in statistical mechanics. F) Anisotropic time and Bergsonian time. G) Information, negentropy and Maxwells demon. Note 1: Definition of the Hamiltonian. Note 2: Thermodynamic entropy. Note 3: Boltzmann statistical entropy. Note 4: Proof of equality of entropy and information.- 13 Lee, Bush, and Wieners Thoughts on Networks and Computers.- A) The analogue computer program