Stephen Wolfram Livestreams

History of Science & Technology Q&A (90 videos)

Biweekly ask-me-anything about the history of science & technology

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New episode streaming Wednesday, May 21, at 3:30pm ET. Submit your questions

History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (October 20, 2021) »

1 hour 18 minutes

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The movie "Adventures of a Mathematician" about Stan Ulam... How do you approach studying the history of technology to inform your work on current projects? Is there a list of history of science and technology books that you recommend? What was it about ancient Greece that allowed for great advances in math and science and great thinkers? Could you talk about Ed Fredkin? In "2001: A Space Odyssey," the alien monolith is said to be a von Neumann probe. Is it rectangular because of the cellular automaton inspiration? What is the book top-right with the horse's head? What do you think is the significance of the antikythera device? Have you read Asimov's "Foundation" trilogy? You said the cellular automata experiments you did in the 80s could have been done at Los Alamos. Why weren't they? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (October 6, 2021) »

1 hour 8 minutes

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What does history have to say about combating anti-science movements, wacky conspiracy theories, etc.? How have people come to believe in gray-headed aliens? Would Richard Feynman have agreed that the counterculture movement was associated with interest in quantum mechanics in the 60s? ​Did Dick Feynman ever prank you or pick a lock that belonged to you? ​Stan Ulam's work on cellular automata and the Manhattan Project? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (September 22, 2021) »

1 hour 32 minutes

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Why are keyboards the default computer interface? Why didn't someone invent the printing press earlier? Was it an engineering problem or a lack of entrepreneurship? Would Professor Feynman have been able to make it as a standup comedian? How much science and technology isn't published or publicly available? Is the most advanced science in the published literature, patents and things like that? Why is the Turing machine model so dominant today in the theory of computation compared to the equivalent lambda calculus? Is there an essay about the printing of "A New Kind of Science"? Is it possible to identify the moment in history when scientific investigation as we know it today broke away from the study of philosophy? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why do you think certain cultures have had such a disproportionate success in science, discovery and business? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (September 8, 2021) »

1 hour 7 minutes

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Who is the most snubbed scientist/inventor? Did you ever meet Martinus Veltman? Did you use his computer algebra system Schoonschip? What computer language were you using when you were doing early particle physics research? What is your perspective on Theranos? Did you have awareness/skepticism of the company before it collapsed? What are tensors and where did they originate from? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (August 25, 2021) »

1 hour 31 minutes

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History of computer algebra systems What was the jet development computer program? What was the main thing you learned from working with Dick Feynman? Have you attended any of the ICMPs? ​What is the history of the university system in the US? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (August 11, 2021) »

1 hour 21 minutes

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What did doctors learn from Henrietta Lacks's cells? What do you think of the Higgs boson controversy? Did you know Steven Weinberg? Did you ever meet Bryce DeWitt? What was Feynman's opinion of supersymmetry? Does your Physics Project deal with gravitons and how to avoid non-renormalizability? Millennium prize problem (probably created by friend Arthur Jaffe) and the Yang–Mills theory... View Less »
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