Volume 52, Number 12 · July 14, 2005
The Tragic Tale of a Genius
By Freeman Dyson
Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener, the Father of Cybernetics
by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman
Basic Books, 423 pp., $27.50
Norbert Wiener was famous at the beginning of his life and at the end. For thirty years in the middle during which he did his best work, he was comparatively unknown. He was famous at the beginning as a child prodigy. His father, Leo Wiener, the first Jew to be appointed a professor at Harvard, was a specialist in Slavic languages. Leo was also an extreme example of a pushy parent. He drove Norbert unmercifully, schooling him at home in Greek, Latin, mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Fifty years later Norbert described, in his autobiography, Ex-prodigy: My Childhood and Youth,[1] how the prodigy was nurtured:
Review, 4397 words
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