Mathematician:Douglas Richard Hofstadter

Mathematician

American mathematician and philosopher most noted for the books he has written.

In particular, famous for being the author of Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid.

Between 1981 and 1983, he took over from Martin Gardner the task of writing the Mathematical Games column in Scientific American, which he renamed to Metamagical Themas.

Nationality

American

History

• Born: February 15, 1945, New York

Notable Quotes

I am the thought you are now thinking.

-- Epigraph to A Passion for Mathematics by Clifford A. Pickover, $2005$.

Publications

Books

• 1979: Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid
• 1981: The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul (co-edited with Daniel Dennett) (ISBN 0-465-03091-2 and ISBN 0-553-01412-9) (ISBN 0-553-34584-2)
• 1985: Metamagical Themas (collection of Scientific American columns and other essays, all with postscripts) (ISBN 0-465-04566-9)
• 1987: Ambigrammi: un microcosmo ideale per lo studio della creatività (in Italian only) (ISBN 88-7757-006-7)
• 1995: Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies
• 1996: Rhapsody on a Theme by Clément Marot. The Grace A. Tanner Lecture in Human Values
• 1997: Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language (ISBN 0-465-08645-4)
• 2000: Eugene Onegin: A Novel Versification (ISBN 0-465-02094-1)
• 2002: Gödel's Proof (revised edition) by Ernest Nagel and James R. Newman, edited by Hofstadter (ISBN 0-8147-5816-9)
• 2004: Foreword to Masters of Deception: Escher, Dali, and the Artists of Optical Illusion, edited by Al Seckel (Sterling Books: ISBN 1-4027-0577-8)
• 2007: I Am a Strange Loop (ISBN 0-465-03078-5)

Papers

• 1976: Energy levels and wave functions of Bloch electrons in rational and irrational magnetic fields, Phys. Rev. B 14
• 1982: Metafont, Metamathematics, and Metaphysics: Comments on Donald Knuth's Article 'The Concept of a Meta-Font' Scientific American (August 1982) (republished in the book Metamagical Themas)
• 1987: A non-deterministic approach to analogy, involving the Ising model of ferromagnetism, in E. Caianiello (ed.), The Physics of Cognitive Processes. Teaneck, NJ: World Scientific.
• 1989: To Err is Human; To Study Error-making is Cognitive Science, Michigan Quarterly Review, Vol. XXVIII, No. 2
• 1995: Speechstuff and thoughtstuff: Musings on the resonances created by words and phrases via the subliminal perception of their buried parts, in Sture Allen (ed.), Of Thoughts and Words: The Relation between Language and Mind. Proceedings of the Nobel Symposium 92, London/New Jersey: World Scientific Publ.
• 1995: On seeing A's and seeing As, Stanford Humanities Review 4,2
• 2001: Analogy as the Core of Cognition, in Dedre Gentner, Keith Holyoak, and Boicho Kokinov (eds.) The Analogical Mind: Perspectives from Cognitive Science, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press/Bradford Book

Sources

• 2005: Clifford A. Pickover: A Passion for Mathematics: Introduction