Valentin Braitenberg

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Valentin von Braitenberg

Valentin von Braitenberg (born June 18, 1926 in Bozen ; † September 9, 2011 in Tübingen ; also Valentin or Valentino Braitenberg ) was a South Tyrolean neuroscientist , cyberneticist and writer .

Life

Valentin von Braitenberg was born as the son of the future Senator Carl von Braitenberg in 1926 into an aristocratic South Tyrolean family who were only allowed to enter his first name in the Italianized form "Valentino" in the birth register. This first contradiction is one of the triggers for Braitenberg's contradicting lifelong thinking. The school attendance was at the Italianized humanistic high school in Bozen, the German lessons took place in the family. He also trained as a violinist at the Conservatory in Bolzano. In contrast to the majority of South Tyroleans , his family opted for “Dableiber”. In the last year of the war in German-occupied South Tyrol, as a result of opposing statements, he was transferred to a punishment company that had to eliminate bomb blind men in Innsbruck .

After the end of the war he first studied physics in Innsbruck , later medicine and was a violist in the Tyrolean State Orchestra. The doctorate and specialist training in neurology and psychiatry took place in Rome . After years of research in Germany and the USA, he completed his habilitation in cybernetics and information theory and became professor of cybernetics at the Institute of Physics at the University of Naples . From 1968 until his retirement in 1994 he was director at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen and honorary professor at the universities of Tübingen and Freiburg . From 1998 to 2001 he was President of the Laboratorio di Scienze Cognitive of the University of Trento in Rovereto .

Braitenberg became known in the robotics scene through his book Vehikel . In 14 examples, he describes how vehicles equipped with sensors (the so-called Braitenberg vehicles ) can react autonomously to environmental stimuli and how seemingly very complex behavior can be brought about by amazingly simple mechanisms.

family

He lived with his American wife Elisabeth, a painter, in Naples, Tübingen and Meran. TV presenter Zeno Braitenberg is one of her three children .

Honors

Valentin von Braitenberg was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Salzburg in 1995. The city of Rovereto made him an honorary citizen. The city of Tübingen presented him and his wife Elisabeth with the Medal of Honor for their 50th wedding anniversary.

Gravestone with the entries of Valentin and Elisabeth von Braitenberg in the cemetery of Maria Himmelfahrt, Oberbozen

Prices

In 2012 the Bernstein Network set up the Valentin Braitenberg Prize, which is supported by the Autonomous Province of Bolzano. In 1994 Valentin von Braitenberg was presented with the Golden Neuron Prize, which was intended as a challenge cup. Other award winners were Günther Palm and Werner von Seelen .

Works

  • with M. Kemali: Atlas of the frog's brain . Berlin: Springer, 1969
  • Webbing of the brain: neuroanatomy for those interested in cybernetic knowledge . Springer, Berlin, 1973, ISBN 3-540-06055-3
  • On the Texture of Brains, An introduction to Neuroanatomy for the Cybernetically Minded . Springer Verlag 1977, ISBN 0-387-08391-X
  • Vehicles: Experiments in synthetic psychology . MIT Press, Cambridge 1984, ISBN 978-0-262-52112-3
    • Vehicle. Experiments with artificial beings . LIT Verlag, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-8258-7160-6
  • Secret center of the world. Why the South Tyrolean capital Bolzano is so little Tyrolean , autobiographical text, in: Merian , September 1987, pp. 22–31
  • Be smart (and other unscientific essays) . Haffmans, Zurich 1987, ISBN 3-251-00112-4
  • with Almut Schüz: Anatomy of the Cortex, Statistics and Geometry . Springer Verlag 1991, ISBN 3-540-53233-1
  • with Ad Aertsen: Information Processing in the Cortex. Experiments and Theory . Springer-Verlag 1992, ISBN 3-540-55391-6
  • with Inga Hosp: Evolution: Development and Organization in Nature, the Bolzano Meeting 1993 . Rowohlt, 1994, ISBN 3-499-19706-5
  • with Inga Hosp (ed.): Simulation, computer between experiment and theory . Rowohlt 1995, ISBN 3-499-19927-0
  • Il Gusto Della Lingua . Alfa & Beta, 1996, ISBN 88-7223-026-8
  • Ill or The Angel and the Philosophers . Novel. Haffmans Zurich 1999, ISBN 3-251-00424-7
  • The picture of the world in your head. A natural history of the mind . LIT Verlag 2004, ISBN 3-8258-7181-9
  • Information - the spirit in nature . With a foreword by Niels Birbaumer . Schattauer Verlag 2011, ISBN 978-3-7945-2768-7

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Z am Sonntag, No. 37/2011 of September 11, 2011; P. 3.
  2. American original edition: V. Braitenberg: Vehicles. Experiments in Synthetic Psychology , MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1984

literature

Web links

Commons : Valentin von Braitenberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files