Heinz von Foerster

Heinz von Foerster
At the Biological Computer Laboratory, the University of Illinois in 1963
Born	November 13, 1911 Vienna, Austria
Died	October 2, 2002 (aged 90) Pescadero, California
Citizenship	United States
Nationality	Austria United States
Fields	Cybernetics Physics Philosophy
Institutions	University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
Alma mater	Technical University of Vienna University of Breslau
Known for	Von Foerster equation Second-order cybernetics Computer science Artificial intelligence Epistemology Biophysics
Influences	Ludwig Wittgenstein
Influenced	William Ross Ashby, Gordon Pask, Gotthard Günther, Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela, Ernst von Glasersfeld, Stafford Beer, John C. Lilly, Niklas Luhmann
Notable awards	Wiener Gold Medal (1983)

Heinz von Foerster (German spelling: Heinz von Förster; November 13, 1911, Vienna – October 2, 2002, Pescadero, California) was an Austrian American scientist combining physics and philosophy, and widely attributed as the originator of Second-order cybernetics. He was twice a Guggenheim fellow (1956–57 and 1963–64) and also was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1980. He is well known for his 1960 Doomsday equation formula published in Science predicting future population growth.

As a polymath, he wrote nearly two hundred professional papers, gaining renown in fields from computer science and artificial intelligence to epistemology, and researched high-speed electronics and electro-optics switching devices as a physicist, and in biophysics, the study of memory and knowledge. He worked on cognition based on neurophysiology, mathematics, and philosophy and was called "one of the most consequential thinkers in the history of cybernetics". He came to the United States, and stayed after meeting with Warren Sturgis McCulloch, where he received funding from The Pentagon to established the Biological Computer Laboratory, which built the first parallel computer, the Numa-Rete. Working with William Ross Ashby, one of the original Ratio Club members, and together with Warren McCulloch, Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann and Lawrence J. Fogel, Heinz von Foerster was an architect of cybernetics and one of the members of the Macy conferences, eventually becoming editor of its early proceedings alongside Hans-Lukas Teuber and Margaret Mead.