| Douglas Hofstadter |
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BIOGRAPHY The son of Nobel Prize -winning physicist Robert Hofstadter , he graduated in Mathematics at Stanford University and received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University Of Oregon in 1975 . As Of 2005 , he is a College Professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science; Adjunct Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, Philosophy, Comparative Literature, and Psychology at Indiana University Bloomington , where he directs the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition . Hofstadter is 's '' Eugene Onegin ''. In '' Le Ton Beau De Marot '' (written in memory of his late wife Carol) he describes himself as a " Pi lingual" (conversant in 3.14159... languages) and an "''oligoglot''" (speaker of few languages). His interests include Music , themes of the Mind , Creativity , Consciousness , Self-reference , Translation , and Mathematical Game s. WORK At Indiana University Bloomington he co-authored with Melanie Mitchell and others, a Cognitive Model of "high-level perception", Copycat , and several other models of Analogy Making and Cognition . The Copycat project has since grown into 'Metacat' and 'Magnificat' and has been worked on by Hofstadter and several assistants. A 2002 overview can be found here (PDF) . Other new models based on the Copycat 'FARGitecture' include SeekWell and SeqSee, which model cognition and analogy in musical and number sequence domains respectively. Hofstadter has not published much in conventional academic journals (except during his early physics career, see below), preferring the freedom of expression of large books of collected ideas. As such, his great influence on computer science is somewhat subversive and underground - his work has inspired countless research projects, but is not always formally referenced. When Martin Gardner retired from writing his '' Mathematical Games '' column for '' Scientific American '' magazine, Hofstadter succeeded him with a column entitled '' Metamagical Themas '' (an anagram of "Mathematical Games"). Hofstadter also invented the concept of ''Reviews of This Book'', a book containing nothing but cross-referenced reviews of itself (the idea was introduced in ''Metamagical Themas''): Apparently, Idries Shah has attempted this, or at least something similar, with The Book Of The Book (ISBN 090086012X). PUBLISHED WORKS Books The books published by Hofstadter are (the ISBNs refer to paperback editions, where available):
Papers Hofstadter wrote, among many others, the following papers:
Involvement in other books Hofstadter wrote forewords for or edited the following books:
Miscellaneous
STUDENTS Some of Hofstadter's former students have also become famous:
HOFSTADTER'S LAW See Also: Hofstadter's Law In ''Gödel, Escher, Bach'', Hofstadter states the oft-cited Hofstadter's Law, a self-referencing Adage , which reads as follows: It always takes longer than expected, even when taking Hofstadter's Law into account. SEE ALSO
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