John Gerald Taylor
John Gerald Taylor (born August 18, 1931 in Hayes (Kent) , † March 10, 2012 ) was a British theoretical physicist and author .
Taylor received his PhD in theoretical physics from Christ's College, Cambridge University in 1956 and has been Professor of Applied Mathematics at King's College London since 1971 , where he was Director of the Center for Neural Networks. He died of complications from osteomyelofibrosis .
From 1956 to 1958 and 1961 to 1963 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study , where he worked with Reinhard Oehme and Hans Joachim Bremermann on dispersion relations in quantum field theory .
He dealt with elementary particle physics , cosmology , quantum field theory and with the theory of the brain and cognitive activity and since 1969 with neural networks (he was editor for Europe of the journal Neural Networks and 1995 president of the International Neural Network Society). He made a model of consciousness (CODAM, Attention Copy Model).
In the 1970s he dealt with paranormal phenomena under the impression of Uri Geller's spoon bends (which he checked himself during Geller's visit to Great Britain in 1974), first looking for an explanation in physics (according to him, only electromagnetism came into question as a force ), but in his 1980 book Science and the Supernatural he came to the conclusion that these phenomena were just delusions.
He was a visiting scientist at Forschungszentrum Jülich and developed investment strategies for hedge funds with neural networks for a Commerzbank group (Commerzbank's Alternative Investment Strategies, COMAS). In 2011 he co-founded Commonwealth Capital Management LLP, which pursued similar practice.
In 2009 he received the IEEE Neural Network Pioneer Award.
One of his hobbies was acting, he appeared in stage productions and wrote science fiction.
Fonts
- The Mind: A User's Manual, 2006
- Neural Networks and the Financial Markets Predicting, Combining, and Portfolio Optimization, 2002
- The Race for Consciousness, 1999
- The Promise of Neural Networks, 1993
- Artificial Neural Networks, 1992
- Mathematical Approaches to Neural Networks 1994
- Science and the Supernatural: An Investigation of Paranormal Phenomena Including Psychic Healing, Clairvoyance, Telepathy, and Precognition by a * Distinguished Physicist and Mathematician, 1980
- Superminds: An Inquiry into the Paranormal, 1975
- New Worlds in Physics, Basic Books 1974
- Black Holes: The End of the Universe ?, London: Souvenir Press 1973
- The New Physics, 1972
- The Shape of Minds to Come, New York: Weybright and Talley 1971
Web links
- Literature by and about John Gerald Taylor in the catalog of the German National Library
- John Gerald Taylor in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (English)
- Works by and about John Gerald Taylor at Open Library
- Biography at Scholarpedia
- Obituary by Stephen Grossberg in Neural Networks 2012, pdf
Individual evidence
- ↑ He had already distanced himself from the electromagnetic explanation in an article in Nature (November 2, 1978) Can Electromagnetism Account for Extra-sensory Phenomena?
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Taylor, John Gerald |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Taylor, John G. |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British physicist and author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 18, 1931 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hayes (Kent) |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 10, 2012 |