Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945 in New York, New York) is an American academic. He is probably best known for his book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (abbreviated as GEB) which was published in 1979, and won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction. This book inspired thousands of students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence.

Biography

---

The son of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Hofstadter, he graduated in Mathematics at Stanford University and received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Oregon in 1975. As of 2005, he is a College Professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science; Adjunct Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, Philosophy, Comparative Literature, and Psychology at Indiana University Bloomington, where he directs the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition.

Hofstadter is multilingual; he spent a few years in Sweden in the mid-1960s where he learned Swedish. In addition to English, his mother tongue, he speaks Italian, French, and German; his knowledge of these languages can be partly attributed to having spent a year of his youth in Geneva. He also speaks some Russian: he translated parts of GEB into Russian, and published a verse translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. In Le Ton beau de Marot (written in memory of his late wife Carol) he describes himself as a "pilingual" (conversant in 3.14159... languages) and an "oligoglot" (speaker of few languages).

More on [ Douglas Hofstadter ]

MIT News: Robotics / artificial intelligence

MIT's new underwater robot can hover in place
Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500
MIT researchers have designed the Odyssey IV, a new robotic underwater vehicle that can hover in place like a helicopter and serve as an invaluable tool for deepwater oil explorers, marine archaeologists, oceanographers and others.
Robot wheelchair finds its own way
Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500
MIT researchers are developing a new kind of autonomous wheelchair that can learn all about the locations in a given building, and then take its occupant to a given place in response to a verbal command.
Memory capacity bigger than previously thought
Mon, 08 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500
A new study from MIT cognitive neuroscientists may overturn the widespread belief that human memory does not store the details of our experiences. They have shown, given the right setting, the human brain can record an amazing amount of information.
Model helps computers sort data more like humans
Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500
In an advance that may impact the field of artificial intelligence, a new model developed at MIT can help computers recognize patterns the same way that humans do. The model can analyze a set of data and figure out which type of organizational structure best fits it.
MIT class asks: Fly me to the moon?
Wed, 21 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500
An MIT graduate class, aimed at figuring out whether MIT could, or should, mount an entry into the $20-million Google Lunar X-Prize competition announced last fall, has arrived at the bottom line: Yes, we can (technically)!
Beaver-like robots face off in annual MIT contest
Fri, 09 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500
Robots designed to toss pool-noodle trees into a river of ping-pong balls ruled over competitors focused on rescuing fuzzy toy beavers in this year's 2.007 contest, "Da (yes) MIT, or Save the Baby Beavers," held on Thursday, May 8, at MIT.

Latest Issue of Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence

Introduction to the special issue on: pluralism and the future of cognitive science
Dale, Rick
The possibility of a pluralist cognitive science
Dale, Rick
On the nature of minds, or: truth and consequences
Edelman, Shimon

Subscribe to Artificial_Intelligence RSS feed