V O N N E U M A N N ' S D A Y
A one-day international conference, organized by the Logic Systems
Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne
(EPFL) on Friday July 25th, 1997, will remember John von Neumann's
contributions to bio-inspired computer science. With the assistance of
international specialists in the field, and notably of Dr. Christopher
Langton of the Santa Fe Institute (US), we will try to determine the
progress of John von Neumann's dream: what have we achieved in the
field of self-reproducing computing machines?
DESCRIPTION
In 1997, we commemorate the 40th anniversary of the death of John von
Neumann. Aside from his contributions to mathematics, John von Neumann
is considered one of the founders of the fields of computer science
and engineering, notably giving his name to the standard architecture
of computers. In the last years of his life, starting at the end of
the forties, his research was marked by a strong biological
inspiration. His last major contribution, the conception of a self-
reproducing cellular automaton, demonstrates an exceptional vision and
daring. Vision, because he borrowed from biology the concept of
genomic information before the discovery of the DNA's double-helix
structure (which implies that, to reproduce, an organism requires a
description of itself). Daring, because his automaton is capable of
both universal construction and universal computation.
But neither von Neumann himself nor his direct successors (Burks,
Thatcher, Codd, etc.) were able to simulate the automaton in its
entirety, and much less to physically implement it. In 1984,
Dr. Christopher Langton introduced a new self- replicating cellular
automaton, simple enough to be entirely simulated. The repercussions
of this work were considerable, both for computer science in general
(with the birth of the concept of "artificial life") and for the
self-replication of artificial organisms in particular.
The goal of this special day is to revisit von Neumann's and Langton's
historical contributions, and to ascertain our progress in the
self-replication of computing machines.
PROGRAM
8:30 Registration
9:00 D. Mange, Lausanne Introduction
9:15 P. Marchal, Neuch=E2tel Von Neumann's Life and Contributions
to Computer Science
9:45 B. McMullin, Dublin Von Neumann's Problem: The
Evolutionary Growth of Complexity
10:45 C. Langton, Santa Fe From von Neumann's Automaton to
Langton's Loop =20
11:15 G. Tempesti, Lausanne Self-replicating Multicellular
Automata
14:00 J. Zahnd and M. Sipper, A Self-reproducing Loop with
Lausanne Universal Computation
14:30 J. Signorini, Paris Simulating von Neumann's Automaton
15:00 U. Pesavento, Princeton An Implementation of von Neumann's=20
Self-reproducing Machine
16:00 P. Nussbaum, Neuch=E2tel Industrial Development of Self-healing=
=20
Field-Programmable Processor Arrays
16:30 J.-O. Haenni and Hardware Implementation of von
J.-L. Beuchat, Lausanne Neumann's Automaton
=20
17:00 Demonstrations
In consideration of the subject and of the nationality of the=20
speakers, all the presentations will be in English.
For further information, please refer to the WWW pages at:
http://lslwww.epfl.ch/neumann
You can also contact the organizers directly:
Gianluca Tempesti
Phone: (+41 21) 693 26 76
Fax: (+41 21) 693 37 05
Email: tempesti@di.epfl.ch
The address of our laboratory is:
Logic Systems Laboratory
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
INN-Ecublens
CH-1015 Lausanne (Switzerland)
Phone: (+41 21) 693 26 40
Fax: (+41 21) 693 37 05
URL: http://lslwww.epfl.ch