PHYSICIST

Heinz von Foerster

1911 - 2002

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Heinz von Foerster (né von Förster; November 13, 1911 – October 2, 2002) was an Austrian-American scientist combining physics and philosophy, and widely attributed as the originator of second-order cybernetics. He was twice a Guggenheim fellow (1956–57 and 1963–64) and also was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1980. He is well known for his doomsday equation, published in a 1960 issue of Science, predicting that the hyperbolic growth of the Earth's population will result in the instantaneous disappearance of all humans on Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026. As a polymath, he wrote nearly two hundred professional papers, gaining renown in fields ranging from computer science and artificial intelligence to epistemology, and researched high-speed electronics and electro-optics switching devices as a physicist, and in biophysics, the study of memory and knowledge. Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in different languages on Wikipedia. Heinz von Foerster is the 530th most popular physicist (up from 545th in 2019), the 670th most popular biography from Austria (up from 694th in 2019) and the 14th most popular Austrian Physicist.

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Among PHYSICISTS

Among physicists, Heinz von Foerster ranks 530 out of 851. Before him are John Leslie, Vagn Walfrid Ekman, George Volkoff, Paul Davies, Giovanni Poleni, and Fabiola Gianotti. After him are Leonid Mandelstam, Vikram Sarabhai, Gustave Trouvé, Maurice Karnaugh, Leona Woods, and Ludvig Lorenz.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1911, Heinz von Foerster ranks 170. Before him are Hume Cronyn, Anatoly Rybakov, Gabriel Almond, Paul Augustin Mayer, Floyd Council, and Guy Burgess. After him are René Barjavel, Rafael Arnaiz Barón, Nikolai Kuznetsov, Grote Reber, Xiao Hong, and Harry Andrews. Among people deceased in 2002, Heinz von Foerster ranks 153. Before him are Gustaaf Deloor, Elie Hobeika, Harold Russell, Gabriel Almond, Marcel Kint, and Văn Tiến Dũng. After him are Layne Staley, Julio Pérez, Ramón Grosso, Ted Williams, Grote Reber, and Kristen Nygaard.

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In Austria

Among people born in Austria, Heinz von Foerster ranks 670 out of 1,424. Before him are Josef Hickersberger (1948), Jan-Carl Raspe (1944), Ulrich Seidl (1952), Adolf Kainz (1903), Richard Tauber (1891), and Fritz Muliar (1919). After him are Peter Habeler (1942), Guido Starhemberg (1657), Victor Capesius (1907), Olga Wisinger-Florian (1844), William Berger (1928), and Saint Sturm (704).

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Among PHYSICISTS In Austria

Among physicists born in Austria, Heinz von Foerster ranks 14. Before him are Anton Zeilinger (1945), Walter Kohn (1923), Otto Robert Frisch (1904), Fritjof Capra (1939), Berta Karlik (1904), and Marian Smoluchowski (1872). After him are Marietta Blau (1894), Friedrich Hasenöhrl (1874), Wilhelm Karl Ritter von Haidinger (1795), Julius Wess (1934), Sulamith Goldhaber (1923), and Peter Zoller (1952).

Austrian born Physicists

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