Neil Gershenfeld
| Neil Gershenfeld | |
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Gershenfeld in January 2007
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| Born | 1959/1960 (age 56–57) |
| Nationality | United States |
| Fields | Computer sciences |
| Institutions | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
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| Known for | Director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms |
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Neil A. Gershenfeld (born 1959 or 1960) is an American professor at MIT and the director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, a sister lab to the MIT Media Lab. His research studies are predominantly focused in interdisciplinary studies involving physics and computer science, in such fields as quantum computing, nanotechnology, and personal fabrication. Gershenfeld attended Swarthmore College, where he graduated in 1981 with a B.A. degree in physics with high honors, and Cornell University, where he earned his Ph.D.in physics in 1990. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Scientific American has named Gershenfeld one of their "Scientific American 50" for 2004 and has also named him Communications Research Leader of the Year. Gershenfeld is also known for releasing the Great Invention Kit in 2008, a construction set that users can manipulate to create various objects.
Gershenfeld has been featured in a variety of newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times and The Economist, and on NPR. He was named as one of the 40 modern-day Leonardos by the Museum of Science and Industry Chicago.Prospect named him as one of the top 100 public intellectuals.
In 1998, Gershenfeld started a class at MIT called "How to make (almost) anything". Gershenfeld wanted to introduce expensive, industrial-size machines to the technical students. However, this class attracted a lot of students from various backgrounds: artists, architects, designers, students without any technical background. In his interview to CNN, Gershenfeld said that "the students... were answering a question I didn't ask, which is: What is this stuff good for? And the answer is: Not to make what you can buy in stores, but to make what you can't buy in stores. It's to personalise fabrication". Gershenfeld believes that this is the beginning of a new revolution: digital revolution in fabrication that will allow people to fabricate things, machines on demand.
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