Geek of the Week: Stephen Wolfram

Here we honor Muggle geeks who embody Ravenclaw spirit...
when they succeed, they soar, and when they fail, they fail spectacularly!

Stephen Wolfram (b. 1959)

"I have a motion sensor for the room that records when I pace up and down. Also a pedometer, and I am trying to get an eye-tracking system set up, but I haven’t done that yet. Oh, and I’ve been wearing a sensor to measure my posture."

**brought to you by a request from NoNeinNyet**

If that quote doesn't convince you of Stephen Wolfram's geekery, try this on for size: at age 10, he was reading physics books; at 13, he attended Eton College on scholarship; by 20, Wolfram had his PhD in theoretical physics.  He's developed the Mathematica software application, a popular mathematics tool that can juggle high-level algebra, advanced formulas, and graphics; and Wolfram Alpha, a computational search engine.

Wolfram Alpha can search math-specific queries (cosines, for example) and factual data like the distance to the moon (not only the average distance, but the actual distance right at this very second); it has recently been expanded to distill one's Facebook data for further analysis (AKA "personal analytics," a term coined by Wolfram himself... what a geek).

Find out more about Stephen Wolfram on Wikipedia.
Visit the Wolfram Demonstrations Project for math fun and crafting inspiration.