The Symposium on Principles of Self-Organization was held at Allerton House on 8–9 June 1960. It was a key conference in the development of cybernetics and was in many ways a continuation of the Macy Conferences. it was organised by

Heinz von Foerster Heinz von Foerster (German spelling: Heinz von Förster; November 13, 1911 – October 2, 2002) was an Austrian American scientist combining physics and philosophy, and widely attributed as the originator of Second-order cybernetics. He was twice ...

through the

Biological Computer Laboratory The Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL) was a research institute of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. It was founded on 1 January 1958, by then Professor of Electrical Engineering Heinz von Foe ...

based at

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univ ...

. It was sponsored by the Information Systems Branch of the U.S. Office of Naval Research.

Participants

There were 38 male participants:

Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois

This was the host organisation. * Murray Babcock *

Alfred Inselberg Alfred Inselberg (22 October 1936, Athens, Greece – 30 December 2019, Tel Aviv, Israel) was an American-Israeli mathematician and computer scientist based at Tel Aviv University. Inselberg started his career at the Biological Computer Laborator ...

Lars Löfgren Lars Löfgren is a Swedish cybernetician. He was awarded the Wiener Gold Medal by the American Society for Cybernetics in 2008. Lars Löfgren was involved in extending the logical and linguistic approaches to various problems raised by early cyber ...

* Albert Mullin * Albert Novikoff * Paul Weston * George Zopf

Other participants from Illinois

* John Bowman, Technological Institute,

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

* Scott Cameron,

Armour Research Foundation IIT Research Institute (IITRI),Greenbaum & Wheeler (1967), cover sheet (technical paper).McCormac; et al. (1967), p. i (book)."IITRI" (or "iiTRi") is used on cover sheets of technical paper documents in prior decades. also known historically and ...

Peter Greene Peter Greene (born Peter Green; October 8, 1965) is an American actor. A character actor, he is generally known for portraying villains. He is best known for the roles in the 1994 films ''The Mask'', where he plays the films antagonist, Dorian ...

, Committee on Mathematical Biology, University of Chicago *

Friedrich Hayek Friedrich August von Hayek ( , ; 8 May 189923 March 1992), often referred to by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian–British economist, legal theorist and philosopher who is best known for his defense of classical liberalism. Haye ...

, Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago * George Jacobi, Armour Research Foundation *

John R. Platt ''For other people named John Platt, see John Platt.'' John Rader Platt (June 29, 1918 – June 17, 1992) was an American physicist and biophysicist, professor at the University of Chicago, noted for his pioneering work on st ...

, Department of Physics, University of Chicago * Stephen Sherwood,

Illinois State Psychiatric Institute Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...

, Chicago * A Shimbel, Illinois State Psychiatric Institute, Chicago

Cambridge Massachusetts

* Manuel Blum, W. S. McCulloch Room,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(MIT) *

Jack Cowan Jack Cowan (6 June 1927 – 10 December 2000) was a Canadian association football player who won championships in both Canada and Scotland. He won the Scottish League Cup with Dundee in 1951–52 (also playing on the losing side in the final of ...

, W. S. McCulloch Room, MIT *

Jerome I. Elkind Jerome Elkind is an American electrical engineer and computer scientist. In 1988 he was co-founder of the Lexia Institute. Biography Elkind was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning his undergraduate degree in 1951 and Sc ...

, Bolt, Beranek, Newman Inc. * Warren McCulloch, W. S. McCulloch Room, MIT * Leo Verbeek, W. S. McCulloch Room, MIT

Other participants

Saul Amarel Saul Amarel (1928 – December 18, 2002) was a professor of computer science at Rutgers University, and best known for his pioneering work in artificial intelligence (AI). He also had a career as a scientist, engineer, and teacher. He was a contribu ...

, Radio Corporation of America *

Ross Ashby W. Ross Ashby (6 September 1903 – 15 November 1972) was an English psychiatrist and a pioneer in cybernetics, the study of the science of communications and automatic control systems in both machines and living things. His first name was no ...

, * Stafford Beer,

United Steel Companies The United Steel Companies was a steelmaking, engineering, coal mining and coal by-product group based in South Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, England. History The company was registered in 1918 and the following year saw a joining together of ste ...

* Ludwig von Bertalanffy * Raymond Beurle, English Electric Valve Company *

Hewitt Crane Hewitt D. Crane (1927–2008) was an American engineer best known for his pioneering work at SRI International on ERMA (Electronic Recording Machine, Accounting), for Bank of America, magnetic digital logic, neuristor logic, the development of an ...

, Stanford Research Institute, Menlo Park, California * Joseph Hawkins * Hans Oestriecher * Gordon Pask *

Anatol Rapaport Anatol Rapoport ( uk, Анатолій Борисович Рапопо́рт; russian: Анато́лий Бори́сович Рапопо́рт; May 22, 1911January 20, 2007) was an American mathematical psychologist. He contributed to general ...

* Charles Rosen * Frank Rosenblatt *

Jack E. Steele Jack E. Steele (January 27, 1924 – January 19, 2009) was an American medical doctor and retired US Air Force colonel, most widely known for coining the word bionics. Biography Steele was born Jack Ellwood Steele in Lacon, Illinois. He attende ...

Roger Sperry Roger Wolcott Sperry (August 20, 1913 – April 17, 1994) was an American neuropsychologist, neurobiologist, cognitive neuroscientist, and Nobel laureate who, together with David Hunter Hubel and Torsten Nils Wiesel, won the 1981 Nobel Prize ...

John Tooley Sir John Tooley (1 June 1924 – 18 March 2020)Tooley profile
announcements.telegraph. ...

* David Willis * Marshal Yovits Two women participated, Kathy Forbes providing secretarial services and Cornelia Schaeffer of Athenium Publishers providing assistance in preparing the subsequent publication of the transactions of the symposium.

References

{{reflist Cybernetics University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign