Could Stephen Wolfram Have Become a Successful Entrepreneur at a Young Age?

  • Thread starter thoughtgaze
  • Start date
  • Tags
    Phd
In summary: He has managed to evade the dangers of youth, and is now comfortably chubby and bald.He needs eyeglasses, too; that is a very sympathetic trait in him.Unfortunately he seems to have outdone us mortals even with his direct contributions to science, before he was 20.
  • #1
thoughtgaze
74
0
I don't understand, how can one get it so young? I refuse to believe he is just some magical being that was born knowing everything... come on, give me some way to rationalize this!
 
Physics news on Phys.org
  • #2
He got his PhD whilst traveling on a spaceship at 500,000km/h
 
  • #3
thoughtgaze said:
I don't understand, how can one get it so young? I refuse to believe he is just some magical being that was born knowing everything
Some colleges (especially community & public ones) let really advanced kids start college at anywhere from 12 to 15. The average science/liberal arts degree can be finished in two/three years with lots of APs or taking more then 18 credits a semester. Then the phD itself can be condensed down to about 3/4 years if you take tons of credit hours, have been working on the dissertation long before the defense, and/or the committee likes you. The phD can take even less time if you go to a school that doesn't have heavy courseload requirements for the PhD; My school requires about 60 credits worth of grad courses, I remember others requiring about 30.

According to wiki, that's pretty much the path he took:
Wolfram was educated at Eton. At the age of 15, he published an article on particle physics[4] and entered Oxford University (St John's College) at age 17. He wrote a widely cited paper on heavy quark production at age 18.[2]
Wolfram received his Ph.D. in particle physics from the California Institute of Technology at age 20[5]
 
Last edited:
  • #4
A 20 year old is an utterly useless being. I'm sure if you were to examine their contribution, somewhere you would find the kernel of uselessness in it
 
  • #5
cronxeh said:
A 20 year old is an utterly useless being. I'm sure if you were to examine their contribution, somewhere you would find the kernel of uselessness in it

It seems he's done more in his 20 years than you've done your entire life.
 
  • #6
cronxeh said:
A 20 year old is an utterly useless being. I'm sure if you were to examine their contribution, somewhere you would find the kernel of uselessness in it

Blenton said:
It seems he's done more in his 20 years than you've done your entire life.
Is that true? (Asking both)

I would like to know what kind of yardstick you are using to determine the usefulness.
 
  • #7
Individuals that show high proficiency in certain areas are given opportunities not following the conventional procedures.

For example Arie Israel does not have a Bachelor Degree or High School Diploma. However, he is a PhD student at Princeton.
 
  • #8
cronxeh has just become older and wiser, like myself.

We KNOW all about the uselessness and wasteful prettiness and energy of 20-year olds.
 
  • #9
My impression (from posts here) was that Stephen Wolfram was a young newly promoted
Ph.D today. But when looking him up at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wolfram
I find a 50 yeras old guy. Obviously he has, in spite of his early Ph.D. at 20, succeeded
in making a rather impressive and fruitful carrier. So in this case not just a pusher with support from surrounding.
 
  • #10
M Grandin said:
My impression (from posts here) was that Stephen Wolfram was a young newly promoted
Ph.D today. But when looking him up at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wolfram
I find a 50 yeras old guy.

Indeed.

He has managed to evade the dangers of youth, and is now comfortably chubby and bald.

He needs eyeglasses, too; that is a very sympathetic trait in him.
 
  • #11
My grandfather got his PhD at 19. I envy him so much!
But he was a music theorist so his PhD doesn't count. :D
 
  • #12
Has he added any new thing to the science or world?
That's just an innocent question...

PS: This thread's reminded me of wolram(aka woolie)
 
  • #13
Lisa! said:
Has he added any new thing to the science or world?

Mathematica? And more lately Wolfram Alpha...
But yes, he is more famous for his work as an entrepreneur and software developer than for his more "direct" contributions to science.
 
  • #15
f95toli said:
Mathematica? And more lately Wolfram Alpha...
But yes, he is more famous for his work as an entrepreneur and software developer than for his more "direct" contributions to science.


Unfortunately he seems to have outdone us mortals even with his direct contributions to science, before he was 20. Wikipedia: "His work with Geoffrey Fox on the theory of the strong interaction is still used today in experimental particle physics.[6]" Also seem to remember him saying that he created Mathematica not as an entrepreneurial venture but simply to allow him to carry out experiments in the area of math he was working on at the time.
 
  • #16
Last edited:
  • #17
How many spikes havs stegy?
 
  • #18
Phyisab**** said:
How many spikes havs stegy?
"How many spikes does Stegy have?"
You can't expect a four year old to write perfect sentences.

Anyway, it seems like Wolfram is one of the very few distinguished scientists to actually attain financial freedom(i.e not being forced into academia and such).
 
  • #19
f95toli said:
Mathematica? And more lately Wolfram Alpha...
But yes, he is more famous for his work as an entrepreneur and software developer than for his more "direct" contributions to science.

Thank you!:smile:
hmmm... Correct me if I'm wrong :Bill Gates didn't finish university and he did a lot more than he's done:uhh:
 
Last edited:
  • #20
f95toli said:
Mathematica? And more lately Wolfram Alpha...
But yes, he is more famous for his work as an entrepreneur and software developer than for his more "direct" contributions to science.

Don't tell that to some of the people around here (two-fishquant) that will only support their cases :rofl:
 
  • #21
Cyclovenom said:
Don't tell that to some of the people around here (two-fishquant) that will only support their cases :rofl:

Honestly, I had no point:biggrin:
I was just asking some innocent questiono:)
 
  • #22
I would have serious questions about his knowledge of basic physics. There is no way you can rush through a physics Ph.D at such a young age without skipping over a lot of stuff.
 
  • #23
Brian_C said:
I would have serious questions about his knowledge of basic physics. There is no way you can rush through a physics Ph.D at such a young age without skipping over a lot of stuff.

Who said he skipped anything? He's just very, very smart. What most people here are failing to mention is that a PhD is a process, it is not a be all end all, nor is it someones best work in life.
 
  • #24
Brian_C said:
I would have serious questions about his knowledge of basic physics. There is no way you can rush through a physics Ph.D at such a young age without skipping over a lot of stuff.

Why do you think that? Because it would take YOU a lot longer to learn and understand it all? I highly doubt that he doesn't understand basic physics. One of the beautiful things about physics is that it is very important to learn the basics before moving up in understanding it would appear he just was able to understand much faster than you or me.
 
  • #25
Here is his first paper written when he was 17:

http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/articles/particle/75-hadronic/index.html

Abstract

A new form of high energy electron-hadron coupling is examined with reference to the experimental data. The electron is taken to have a neutral vector gluon cloud with a radius . This is shown to be consistent with measurements on and . At low energies, only photons couple to the gluons, but at higher energies `evaporation' then `boiling' of and occurs, allowing strong interactions...
 
  • #26
No, I don't believe you can become an expert in a subject at such a young age. Teenagers are not mentally prepared to do graduate level work in physics. The fact that he has accomplished nothing as a physicist since receiving his Ph.D only validates my point.
 
  • #27
Brian_C said:
No, I don't believe you can become an expert in a subject at such a young age. Teenagers are not mentally prepared to do graduate level work in physics. The fact that he has accomplished nothing as a physicist since receiving his Ph.D only validates my point.

You shouldn't compare others to what you feel yourself can accomplish.
 
  • #28
Brian_C said:
No, I don't believe you can become an expert in a subject at such a young age. Teenagers are not mentally prepared to do graduate level work in physics. The fact that he has accomplished nothing as a physicist since receiving his Ph.D only validates my point.

He probably got bored with physics. If you read his bio, his interests changed to cellular automata in which he made the most contributions.

After receiving PhD, he kept publishing, but he complained his papers were owned by institutions like Caltech. Hence he left, and founded his own company. One might argue he is also the richest physicist.
 
Last edited:
  • #29
Leptos said:
"How many spikes does Stegy have?"
You can't expect a four year old to write perfect sentences.

I didn't mean it like that, I thought it was it was an interesting look into his very young mind. I have a sample of my writing when i was four actually, it's something like "Wer dose a buterfly go wen it rains? Maibe he hids in caves, maibe he hids under roks. Maibe he stays outsid."
 
  • #30
Brian_C said:
No, I don't believe you can become an expert in a subject at such a young age. Teenagers are not mentally prepared to do graduate level work in physics. The fact that he has accomplished nothing as a physicist since receiving his Ph.D only validates my point.

Sorry but in my opinion you are in denial. There are numerous examples of people making contributions to their fields at a young age on a level which us mere mortals could never dream of in an entire lifetime. For example, Evariste Galois. Also I'm not sure about his early contributions but Landau received his PhD at age 21. Also, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_child_prodigies .
 
  • #31
story645 said:
The phD can take even less time if you go to a school that doesn't have heavy courseload requirements for the PhD
British PhDs generally have no course load requirements.
You can just turn up and submit a thesis on day 1 - although at some places you have to hang around for 3 terms afterwards before you can get the degree.

Until recently it was fairly common for Oxford and Cambridge to admit very young maths prodigies for degrees and PhDs. I know of a couple of people that got maths Phds before they were 18. It's more difficult now with background checks for working with childrens
 
Last edited:
  • #32
Wolfram was born in London in 1959. His father ran an import-export business and wrote novels on the side. His mother was an Oxford philosopher. "I was viewed as a hopeless, crazy child," he says. "My parents concluded that I was 'impossibly psychologically confused and would never get anywhere in life.'" He wrote his first two scientific papers with no help except what he could find in the Eton library and popular science journals. Without bothering to graduate, Wolfram moved on to Oxford and became acquainted, for the first time, with "real scientist types." He entered the university just after his 17th birthday. "The first day I got to my first-year lectures and decided they were really awful," he says. "So I went to third-year lectures, and I found those pretty boring too." He left Oxford, once again without a diploma, and enrolled for graduate studies at Caltech, which had recruited him on the strength of his publications and his burgeoning reputation.

In Pasadena, Wolfram worked with some of the best physicists in the world. Once again, he decided he was wasting his time and made motions to move on. "But we tricked him, so to speak," says Nobelist Murray Gell-Mann, who helped to bring Wolfram west. "We gave him a Ph.D." Wolfram was barely 20. The Caltech physicists also awarded him a senior research position to help keep him around. It didn't. Neither did the MacArthur Fellowship, which came at that time and paid him $128,000 over five years.

Wolfram simply didn't seem interested in doing what he was expected to do. What had impressed Gell-Mann, Feynman, and most other physicists--at least those whom Wolfram hadn't totally antagonized--was the range of subjects he penetrated with alacrity: high-energy physics, mathematics, cosmology, computing, even artificial intelligence. But they would have preferred him to stick to physics. "Most students are very, very impressed with the beauty and fundamental character of elementary particle physics," says Gell-Mann. "Stephen has a different kind of taste."
http://www.stephenwolfram.com/interviews/88-fortune/
 
Last edited:
  • #33
Phyisab**** said:
Sorry but in my opinion you are in denial. There are numerous examples of people making contributions to their fields at a young age on a level which us mere mortals could never dream of in an entire lifetime. For example, Evariste Galois. Also I'm not sure about his early contributions but Landau received his PhD at age 21. Also, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_child_prodigies .
i liked how they made a distinction between math & mental calculation. one of my biggest pet peeves is people who think they're the same, as in "what do you mean you can't figure out what your change is? i thought you do math"

& don't forget paul erdos. he did his bachelor's & phd at the same time & graduated when he was 21 or something.
 
  • #34
I think the point some PFers were trying to make is that being a child prodigy and finishing your Ph.D at age 20 may not give you a distinct advantage over those who finish their Ph.D at age 24-27(for example Einstein and Niels Bohr were both 26 around the time of completing their Ph.Ds). At the same time you need to consider that Wolfram is respectable in multiple fields and is one of the only scientists to have financial freedom. I'm sure Richard Feynman would have preferred a life outside of academia.
 
  • #35
Well, gosh, it must be easy to get Ph.D. at 20...he would have done most of the work toward it while still a teenager, which means he still knew everything. It's much harder to do as an adult after you find out you don't know everything anymore. :biggrin:

Edit: The question I'd like to ask him is if he had the choice to do it all over again, would he want to follow the same course? My concern with child prodigies isn't that they aren't able to excel in one area, but that they may lack the experience and wisdom to make good choices about what they really want to do with their lives and get pigeon-holed into something that they may be good at, but isn't necessarily the thing they enjoy most or would choose if not pushed into it by their parents at a young age.
 
<h2>1. Could Stephen Wolfram have become a successful entrepreneur at a young age?</h2><p>It is difficult to say for certain whether Stephen Wolfram could have become a successful entrepreneur at a young age. While he did demonstrate entrepreneurial skills and success with his company Wolfram Research, Inc., it is impossible to predict what could have happened had he started at a younger age.</p><h2>2. What factors contributed to Stephen Wolfram's success as an entrepreneur?</h2><p>Some factors that likely contributed to Stephen Wolfram's success as an entrepreneur include his intelligence, creativity, determination, and ability to think outside the box. He also had a strong background in mathematics and computer science, which were crucial for his work in creating Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha.</p><h2>3. Did Stephen Wolfram face any challenges as a young entrepreneur?</h2><p>Yes, Stephen Wolfram faced several challenges as a young entrepreneur. One of the main challenges was convincing investors and potential customers to believe in his vision and invest in his company. He also faced technical challenges in developing and refining his products, as well as competition from other companies.</p><h2>4. How did Stephen Wolfram's age impact his entrepreneurship journey?</h2><p>Stephen Wolfram's age likely had both positive and negative impacts on his entrepreneurship journey. On one hand, his young age may have made it more difficult to be taken seriously by investors and potential customers. On the other hand, his youth and fresh perspective may have allowed him to think outside the box and come up with innovative ideas.</p><h2>5. What lessons can we learn from Stephen Wolfram's success as a young entrepreneur?</h2><p>There are several lessons we can learn from Stephen Wolfram's success as a young entrepreneur. These include the importance of perseverance, creativity, and thinking outside the box. Additionally, his success shows the potential for young entrepreneurs to make a significant impact in their fields, regardless of their age.</p>

1. Could Stephen Wolfram have become a successful entrepreneur at a young age?

It is difficult to say for certain whether Stephen Wolfram could have become a successful entrepreneur at a young age. While he did demonstrate entrepreneurial skills and success with his company Wolfram Research, Inc., it is impossible to predict what could have happened had he started at a younger age.

2. What factors contributed to Stephen Wolfram's success as an entrepreneur?

Some factors that likely contributed to Stephen Wolfram's success as an entrepreneur include his intelligence, creativity, determination, and ability to think outside the box. He also had a strong background in mathematics and computer science, which were crucial for his work in creating Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha.

3. Did Stephen Wolfram face any challenges as a young entrepreneur?

Yes, Stephen Wolfram faced several challenges as a young entrepreneur. One of the main challenges was convincing investors and potential customers to believe in his vision and invest in his company. He also faced technical challenges in developing and refining his products, as well as competition from other companies.

4. How did Stephen Wolfram's age impact his entrepreneurship journey?

Stephen Wolfram's age likely had both positive and negative impacts on his entrepreneurship journey. On one hand, his young age may have made it more difficult to be taken seriously by investors and potential customers. On the other hand, his youth and fresh perspective may have allowed him to think outside the box and come up with innovative ideas.

5. What lessons can we learn from Stephen Wolfram's success as a young entrepreneur?

There are several lessons we can learn from Stephen Wolfram's success as a young entrepreneur. These include the importance of perseverance, creativity, and thinking outside the box. Additionally, his success shows the potential for young entrepreneurs to make a significant impact in their fields, regardless of their age.

Similar threads

  • General Discussion
Replies
10
Views
817
Replies
8
Views
789
Replies
142
Views
7K
  • General Discussion
Replies
11
Views
2K
Replies
2
Views
2K
  • General Discussion
Replies
33
Views
2K
Replies
2
Views
883
  • General Discussion
Replies
17
Views
2K
  • STEM Academic Advising
Replies
8
Views
300
  • STEM Career Guidance
Replies
6
Views
293
Back
Top