Douglas Hofstadter

Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945 in New York, New York) is an American academic whose research focuses on the nature of thinking, consciousness, and creativity. He is best known for his book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (abbreviated as GEB) which was published in 1979, and which won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction. Hofstadter is the son of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Hofstadter. He grew up on the campus of Stanford University, where his father was a professor. The younger Hofstadter graduated with Distinction in Mathematics from Stanford in 1965 and received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Oregon in 1975. Hofstadter is College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science at Indiana University Bloomington, where he directs the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition which consists of himself and his graduate students, forming the "Fluid Analogies Research Group" (FARG). He was initially... full article at wikipedia