Norbert Wiener – The Father Of Cybernetics And A Former Child Prodigy

Many characters in this globe never fail to astonish us with their great sense of humor and, intelligence. Especially when we make the acquaintance of some leading light infantile. One of them was Norbert Wiener – the father of cybernetics and a former child prodigy.

Early Life of Norbert Wiener

Norbert was born on 26 November 1864 Columbia, Missouri to Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn. They were the immigrants of Poland and, Germany. Norbert’s father had ample knowledge of mathematics. Though he used to teach his child (Norbert) until he left home.

He completed his schooling from Ayer High School in 1903 when he was eleven. It was the highlight of that time, that an 11-year-old boy has completed his education at such remarkable age.

At the age of fourteen, Wienerdid BA in mathematics from Tufts College. However, this was not all, he led off to Harvard to graduate studies in zoology. Afterward, He moved to Cornell to learn philosophy in 1911 when he was seventeen. By the next year, he came back to Harvard, while he was ongoing with his philosophical studies. Wiener received a Ph.D. from Harvard for a dissertation on mathematics logic at nineteen.

Studies & Achievements

Norbert’s journey was commendable as he was the youngest one amongst all to achieve the heights in a short period. On a subvention from Harvard, Wiener carried on to England, to study mathematical logic at the University of Cambridge. Subsequently to the University of Göttingen in Germany. On the advice of Russell, he also began a serious study of general mathematics, in which he strongly influences himself. Moreover, he published his first review in the mathematical gazette legate of Mathematics in 1913 at Cambridge University. 

When World War I erupted, he strived to join but was repudiated because of impaired vision. For five years he attempted diversified jobs. He was a teacher at the University of Maine, an apprentice engineer, a writer for an encyclopedia, a journalist of sorts, and a mathematician at Aberdeen analysis. Ultimately, in 1919, he became an adviser at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) by the mathematics department, a department with no real practice of erudition or experimentation at that point in time. Although, to have been the right decision for Norbert, for he had set foot upon an exceptionally useful time, just as MIT itself was a start to progress into a great substantial core of intellectualism in automation. Therefore, he remained on the MIT faculty until his retirement.

Honors – Norbert Wiener

In 1933, Wiener was picked up by the National Academy of Sciences but walked out shortly, repulsed by some of the features of institutionalized science that he came across there. Amidst World War II Wiener operated on focusing shots at a target in motion. The concept unfolds to Envision, Implantation, and flattening of Stationary Time Series (1949). This led him to draw up the idea of cybernetics.

After the war, Norbert kept on going to innovate on extensively broad subjects which include mathematical prediction theory and quantum theory. And Hence after the roller-coaster ride, he concluded two volumes of autobiography namely, Ex-Prodigy (1953) and I Am a Mathematician (1956). In 1963 Wiener was honored with the National Medal of Science, the medal was hand over to him a few weeks before his death.

Wiener astonished everyone with his intelligence and therefore, succeeded in proving himself before the world.

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