Nils Aall Barricelli
Nils Aall Barricelli Credit: edge69 / Getty Images In March 2003, science and technology historian George Dyson gave a typically entertaining TED talk about the creation of the modern computer, featuring characters ranging from Thomas Hobbes and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in the 17th century, to John von Neumann, a pioneer of the modern computer in the 1940s. Despite the luminous supporting cast, however, the star of Dyson’s show was Italian-Norwegian mathematician Nils Aall Barricelli. “This is Barricelli’s universe,” Dyson says. “This is the universe we live in now. It’s the univ...
Source: cosmosmagazine.com