Biological Computer Laboratory

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The Biological Computer Laboratory ( BCL ) was a research institute in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois . It was founded on January 1st, 1958 by the then Professor for Electrical Engineering Heinz von Foerster . He was head of the BCL until his retirement.

The main focus of research at the BCL was system theory and especially the area of ​​self-organizing systems and bionics , the attempt to analyze biological processes, to formalize them and to implement them on computers. The BCL thus followed up on both the ideas of Warren McCulloch and the Macy conferences .

In the first decade of its existence, the BCL was mainly a research laboratory with no teaching of its own. Students could work at the BCL, but were not trained.

Until 1965, many researchers held a visiting professorship at the BCL: W. William Ainsworth ( England ), Alex Andrew (England), W. Ross Ashby (England), Gordon Pask (England), Gotthard Günther ( USA , Germany ), Dan Cohen ( Israel ), Lars Löfgren ( Sweden ). Ashby (since 1961) and Gotthard Günther (since 1967) received regular professorships , Löfgren and Pask remained in constant contact with the BCL even after their visiting professorship.

The BCL was mainly financed through third-party funds . In particular, the military organizations US Air Force and US Navy had large budgets for basic research in the 1950s and 1960s , which were also available for non-military areas. Other donors were: Department of Health ; Education and Welfare ; Public Health Service ; National Institutes of Health ; National Science Foundation , Washington, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research , New York; National Aeronautics and Space Administration , Electronics Research Center, Boston, Massachusetts; Office of Education, Bureau of Research, Washington, DC and POINT , San Francisco, California. At the beginning of the 1970s , due to the Mansfield Amendment, the allocation of military research funds had to be limited to projects that provided results that could be used by the military. Heinz v. Foerster failed to find sponsors of equal value.

In 1974 the BCL was closed due to a lack of research funds.

source

  • Albert Müller: A Brief History of the BCL. In: Austrian Journal of History. 11 (1), 2000, pp. 9-30 full text

Web links

notes

  1. ↑ Due to incorrect site settings there, the correct page cannot be linked directly. Click on "Archive" on the left, then click on Foerster's photo on the far right in the picture gallery that appears, then the correct page will appear.