He was a child prodigy, publishing his first paper at 15. Now Stephen Wolfram says he has created a new kind of science based on simple computer programs rather than equations. It’s a bold claim, but it has taken him 20 years-ten of them thinking and working late into the night, and publishing nothing. By a nice irony, that intellectual space was bought by the millions he made out of Mathematica, a computer program that makes complicated mathematics doable for ordinary mortals. Now, at 41, he’s busy gearing himself up for the glare of publicity as he prepares to…
Principia Mathematica III
By Marcus Chown
25 August 2001


