Walter Pitts

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Walter Pitts (right) and Jerome Lettvin with their study object, a frog

Walter Pitts (born April 23, 1923 in Detroit , Michigan , † May 14, 1969 in Cambridge , Massachusetts ) was an American logician who worked in the field of cognitive psychology .

biography

Pitts was considered an eccentric genius when he began researching at the University of Chicago as an unenrolled student who ran away from home at 15 and side-entry researcher. As a teenager he taught himself ancient Greek , Latin , Sanskrit and other languages ​​as well as logic and mathematics in self-study. At the age of 12 he read the Principia Mathematica by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead in the library and wrote a letter to Russell that impressed Russell so much that he invited him to England and attended Russell's lectures in Chicago in 1938. Pitts also impressed the Chicago professor Rudolf Carnap after he had given him an annotated copy of the Logical Structure of the World . Carnap then spent months trying in vain to find out who he was, since he had not introduced himself, and found him a subordinate job at the university, but Pitts did not pursue a graduation as a student and never received a university degree.

He became an employee of Warren McCulloch in Chicago, who took him into his house because he had no permanent accommodation at the time. This gave rise to the classic works on early mathematical neuron models ( A logical calculus of ideas immanent in nervous activity , 1943) and neural networks . The work influenced the mathematician and computer pioneer John von Neumann, among others . McCulloch and his friend Jerome Lettwin (1920-2011), also a doctor, gave Pitts an assistant position in 1943 with the mathematician Norbert Wiener from MIT . He received the post after the skeptical Viennese, who himself was once considered a mathematical prodigy, tested him by going over his proof of the ergodic theorem with him on the blackboard . Pitts was accepted by Wiener as a doctoral student and he even personally put together a curriculum for him from various subjects from mathematics to circuit theory and electronics. In 1944, Pitts was also employed by the Kellex Corporation , a petrochemical company that also dealt with the processing of radioactive materials.

In 1952 he was with McCulloch, Lettvin and Pat Wall (Patrick David Wall; 1925-2001) part of the group that was employed by MIT professor Jerome Wiesner on advice from Wiener in the research laboratory for electronics to study the functioning of the nervous system. Within this group, which did pioneering work in the cognitive sciences, he was one of the leading figures with McCulloch, even if he did not like to see himself mentioned in publications and turned down degrees and official positions at the university. His way of working was also unusual - he was often seen reading in a bar. He remained at MIT until his death, but became increasingly isolated after Wiener broke up with McCulloch and anyone associated with him for personal reasons (his wife disliked McCulloch), including Pitts. Pitts died in 1969 of bleeding esophageal varices , a common disease that accompanies cirrhosis of the liver .

An important mathematical model of neurons is now called the McCulloch-Pitts cell after him . The theoretical foundations that he formulated together with McCulloch were important for the development of neuroinformatics and cognitive science . He worked on an extensive manuscript on three-dimensional neural networks and most recently with Robert Gesteland on the sense of smell.

Others

At the same time as his classic essays on neuron models, he also wrote a Hoax article with Lettwin .

See also

Works

  • Some Observations on the Simple Neuron Circuit , In: Bulletin of Mathematical Biology , Volume 4 1942, pp. 121-129.
  • The Linear theory of Neuron Networks: The Static Problem , In: Bulletin of Mathematical Biology , Volume 4, 1942, pp. 169-175.
  • The Linear theory of Neuron Networks: The Dynamic problem , In: Bulletin of Mathematical Biology , Volume 5, 1943, pp. 23-31.
  • with HD Landahl, Warren McCulloch: A Statistical Consequence of the Logical Calculus of Nervous Nets , In: Bulletin of Mathematical Biology , Volume 4, 1943, pp. 135-137.
  • A General Theory of Learning and Conditioning , Part 1,2, Psychometrika, Volume 8, 1943, pp. 1-18, 131-140
  • with Warren McCulloch: A Logical Calculus of Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity , In: Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics , Volume 5m, 1943, pp. 115-133.
  • with Warren McCulloch: On how we know universals: The perception of auditory and visual forms , In: Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics , Volume 9, 1947, pp. 127-147.
  • with R. Howland, Jerome Lettvin, Warren McCulloch, PD Wall: Reflex inhibition by dorsal root interaction , In: Journal of Neurophysiology 18, 1955, 1-17.
  • with PD Wall, Warren McCulloch, Jerome Lettvin: Effects of strychnine with special reference to spinal afferent fibers , Epilepsia Series 3, Volume 4, 1955, pp. 29-40.
  • with Jerome Lettvin, Humberto Maturana , Warren McCulloch: What the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain , In: Proceedings of the Institute of Radic Engineers , Volume 47, 1959, pp. 1940-1959
  • with Humberto Maturana, Jerome Lettvin, Warren McCulloch: Anatomy and physiology of vision in the frog , In: Journal of General Physiology , Volume 43, 1960, pp. 129--175
  • with Robert Gesteland, Jerome Lettvin: Chemical Transmission in the Nose of the Frog , In: J Physiol ., Vol. 181, 1965, pp. 525-529.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jerome Lettwin, a fellow student in Chicago, quoted in Conway, Siegelman Dark Hero of the Information Age. In search for Norbert Wiener , Basic Books 2005, p. 114
  2. ^ Conway, Spiegelman, loc. cit.
  3. ^ Charles Wallis, see web links
  4. ↑ Lettwin, Pitts A mathematical Theory of the Affective Psychoses , Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, Volume 5, 1943, pp. 139-148
  5. ^ So Charles Wallis, see web links (Project Muse Biography von Pitts)
personal data
SURNAME Pitts, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician, pioneer of neuroinformatics
DATE OF BIRTH April 23, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Detroit , Michigan
DATE OF DEATH May 14, 1969
Place of death Cambridge , Massachusetts