Norbert Wiener

T hrough the week of October 8–14, 1994, a conference entitled “The Legacy of Norbert Wiener: A Centennial Symposium” was held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The idea, of course, was to honor Norbert Wiener on this occasion and to review his contributions to mathematics, science, and engineering, but a deeper purpose was to bring out the significance of the interactions among these disciplines in contemporary research, as illustrated in the work of Wiener himself and others influenced by that work. We quote from the program: [This symposium] begins with talks on current research in the areas of his fundamental contributions to mathematics. It continues with speakers representing a variety of disciplines with strong and growing relationships to mathematics. Finally, throughout the week there are talks devoted to Dr. Wiener’s intellectual development and his profound influence on his colleagues at MIT and elsewhere. An important goal of this symposium is to alert the mathematical, scientific, and engineering community to new opportunities for interactions between mathematics and other disciplines. The symposium was sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the American Mathematical Society, with financial support from Henry Singleton, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Sloan Foundation, and the National Science Foundation. The proceedings of this conference will be published by the American Mathematical Society. The following article is a selection of excerpts from the biography printed for the program of the symposium, which was prepared by David Jerison and Daniel Stroock.