Norbert Wiener papers

The Norbert Wiener papers consist primarily of correspondence and manuscripts of writings by Wiener and by others. The collection spans the years 1898 to 1966 with the bulk of the material dating from 1910 to 1963.

From early childhood Wiener was perceived as exceptional, and this perception in part explains the large amount of material from his youth in the collection. Writings from his high school years and early correspondence with his family were retained and can be found in the collection.

In 1910, when Wiener was sixteen, he was away from his family for the first time. The correspondence between Wiener and his family began at this time, when he was attending Cornell University. He wrote his sisters and parents letters in Latin, German, French, and English while he was studying at Cornell and later at Cambridge University, the University of Göttingen, and Columbia University. The family letters continue during his first work experiences with the Encyclopedia Americana in Albany, New York, the University of Maine in Orono, and at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland where he worked for Oswald Veblen. These letters chronicle Wiener's academic progress, interests, and perceptions of the places that he lived. There are few personal letters from Wiener to his family after 1926, the year of his marriage. While the collection does contain letters from his parents and sisters to Wiener, most are from Wiener to his family.

During his early years, most of Wiener's letters were addressed to his father, Leo Wiener, and this correspondence shows the close relationship between father and son. Until Wiener entered high school, his father taught him, and Leo Wiener continued to play an influential part in his education and early professional life. Leo Wiener was a Harvard philologist and Wiener's letters usually inquire about the progress of Leo Wiener's latest project or ask advice for dealing with criticism of his father's work. The letters also ask and comment upon advice from Leo Wiener. At the age of twenty-three, Wiener asked permission of his father to join the Army. It was due to his father's suggestion that Wiener started to write popular as well as scientific articles (see letter of January 12, 1918).

Other material in the collection from Wiener's childhood and youth further illustrates his intellectual development. Series 3 contains his senior essay from Ayer High School and some of his college notebooks. His earliest notebooks concern a variety of subjects yet they often have doodles and mathematical problems in them as well. A number of his graduate philosophy essays plus drafts and worksheets for his Harvard PhD thesis are also available. Published and unpublished articles written at Cambridge and Göttingen start to reflect Wiener's transition from philosopher and logician to mathematician (Series 3). Other information about Wiener's youth is in Series 2, which includes Army records, grades from Tufts College, and graduation programs from Ayer High School, Tufts, and Harvard.

Although the earliest records in the collection are letters from Wiener to his family, the letters from 1926 to 1934 are primarily from friends and colleagues to Wiener. From 1934 on, more copies of Wiener's responses follow incoming letters so that the collection provides a more complete historical perspective.

During his post-graduate days at Cambridge University, Wiener started to correspond with his fellow students from Harvard and Cambridge, even though they were several years older. While in Cambridge he received a few letters from another Harvard philosophy fellow who was studying at Oxford, T. S. Eliot. Wiener also corresponded with some of his professors including Bertrand Russell and G. H. Hardy. For Wiener's wedding present, another professor, E. V. Huntington, sent a "... set of postulates" (see letter of March 15, 1926, in folder 28).

The material added by the family in 1994 includes information about Margaret Wiener and family photographs.

In the correspondence dated 1920 and later, professional correspondence is dominant. Also, as Wiener's scholarly reputation grew, the bulk of his correspondence increased. Because of his varied interests and worldwide travel, Wiener corresponded with a large community of scholars and scientists, often on a personal as well as a professional level. Correspondents represented in the collection include Harald Bohr, Max Born, Jacob Bronowski, Albert Einstein, R. G. D. Richardson, J. D. Tamarkin, Piet Hein, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and Grey Walter. Because of the large number of correspondents, a selective index is included in this finding aid.

Wiener's development as a mathematician is illustrated in the correspondence and through Wiener's writings. A December 1931 letter from J. D. Tamarkin, for example, discusses all the errors that Wiener made in his earliest work, "Tauberian Theorems." The gradual development of information theory and cybernetics can be traced through letters from the 1940s, especially through correspondence with Arturo Rosenblueth, John von Neumann, Warren S. McCulloch and other investigators of the new science. The exchange of opinions on mathematical problems in Wiener's correspondence sometimes served as a sounding board for future articles. While Wiener often worked alone, he also depended upon his colleagues' ideas. The majority of Wiener's collaborative efforts were with fellow mathematicians such as Aurel Wintner, Dirk Jan Struik, and Max Born. Wiener's letters emphasize the fruitful results that occurred from the lengthy collaborations that he had with H. R. Pitt and R. E. A. C. Paley.

Wiener's interest in applied mathematics and interdisciplinary science resulted in his collaboration with scientists in many fields. Series 3 contains some of the published and unpublished works that Wiener wrote with his colleagues, and Series 1 further documents his collaborative efforts. During World War II, Wiener worked with a young engineer, Julian Bigelow, for the National Defence Research Committee (NDRC) on a fire control apparatus for anti-aircraft guns, and some of their progress is documented in the correspondence for that period. After the war, Wiener's work with biologists, physiologists, and other medical doctors, as well as with engineers, expanded. His best known work was with the noted physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth. The collection contains numerous letters between them and some of their writings including Dynamics of the Nervous System, an unpublished book (see folders 606-608). Series 1 and 3 also include material about encephalography from the work of Wiener and scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital such as Doctors John Barlow and Mollie Brazier. Wiener became increasingly involved in developing prosthetic devices with the help of his medical and engineering colleagues. Not all of Wiener's collaborative efforts resulted in a joint paper; many of his individual speeches and articles depended upon information that he gained from others, a fact that Wiener always made clear.

Students and colleagues sent Wiener manuscripts and reprints of their own works in order to receive his opinion. These writings are in Series 4. Many of the scientists who collaborated with Wiener are represented in this section, for example, R. E. A. C. Paley, Pesi Masani, Walter Pitts, Joseph Doob, and Armand Siegel. Another way that Wiener expressed his opinion about his colleagues' works was through the many book reviews he wrote (see Series 3).

While the collection does not contain all of Wiener's written work, it has a great deal of the earliest and the latest work. The writings in Series 3 start to become sparse in the 1920s, and large gaps continue until 1948. Because approximately half of the writings were unpublished, a unique view of Wiener's work is provided by the collection. The unpublished writings include various types of works, such as a lecture titled, "Mathematical Problems of Communication Theory" (folder 734), a speech on "The Computing Machine and Form (Gestalt)" (folder 665), and a memorandum on the scope of a suggested computing machine (folder 558). Further insights can be gained from the collection's published works that progress from the early draft stage to the final reprint. The progression of Wiener's theories can be interpreted throughout his writings. For example, after Cybernetics was published in 1948, cybernetics became a recurring topic in his writings, both in published articles and in unpublished speeches and articles. By 1952, Wiener was writing a treatise on cybernetics based upon the work that had been done in the area over the last five years (see folders 685 and 730). He was constantly called upon to define cybernetics, but his definitions did not remain static. The implications and applications of cybernetics expanded over the years, and in 1958 Wiener delivered a speech on "The Relation of Cybernetics to Semantics" (see folder 830).

Wiener's involvement with interdisciplinary work at MIT started prior to his work in cybernetics. For instance, in a letter to Vannevar Bush he supports the idea of a cooperative scientific institute in the Boston area to be called the Institute for Exact Sciences, which would encompass physics, chemistry, mathematics, and astronomy (see letter of November 21, 1934). In 1941, Wiener was on the Supervisory Committee on the Research Center of Applied Mathematics (see folder 61). Wiener's forty year career at MIT enabled him to delve into different areas. When Wiener was retiring in May 1960, he wrote to thank President Julius Stratton and stated that "everything that I have been able to accomplish has been accomplished here at M.I.T...." (see folder 281).

Wiener's letters and writings show that he continually collaborated with students and faculty members at MIT. Wiener would offer ideas to the Institute's engineering faculty, and they would attempt to apply them, often with good results. In 1950, Wiener mentioned in a speech that he was working on a prosthetic "hearing glove" with Jerome Wiesner. The mail response to this speech was overwhelming; however, Wiesner's and Wiener's work was not yet complete and never succeeded (see also folders 623 and 624). Because of Wiener's close contact with his MIT colleagues, it must be presumed that some of his collaborative efforts do not appear in the collection. The collaborations were often casual and verbal. For example, one gap in the collection is the small number of letters and manuscripts that directly relate to Vannevar Bush's and Wiener's work in the '20s on the Bush differential and analyzer.

His students also often helped Wiener with this scientific work, as the correspondence with Norman Levinson and Jerome Lettvin shows. Another illustration of his work with students can be seen in the extensive correspondence and patent information (Series 2) on the electrical network system developed by Wiener and Yuk Wing Lee. Wiener's willingness to help his former students is also apparent in his correspondence. He gave advice and tried to find jobs for many of his students and young colleagues. A December 18, 1941, letter to the director of scientific personnel at the National Research Council suggested the development of more NDRC projects in order to utilize the talents of young mathematicians who were jobless. Some of his students eventually joined the MIT faculty; for example, Yuk Wing Lee, Norman Levinson, and Jerome Lettvin. The collection gives a view into Wiener's personality. Wiener often exchanged ideas on non-scientific subjects with his colleagues in his correspondence. Wiener was increasingly alarmed by the world situation and his letters often reflect his concern. Before World War II, Wiener's letters showed his efforts to place scholars who had lost their positions because of political and social unrest. Two examples are Antonio Zygmund and Yuk Wing Lee. He was a member of such organizations as the Emergency Committee in the Aid of Displaced German Scholars and the China Aid Society. He also wrote several essays about the predicament of German scholars (see especially folders 537 and 543).

After World War II, Wiener felt that many scientists were evading their responsibility to the modern world. He wrote to such friends as Arturo Rosenblueth and J. B. S. Haldane about these social problems. His letters show a consistent refusal to do any work that might be used by the military after the War. In addition, Wiener wrote articles about science and society. The best known article was "A Scientist Rebels" (see folder 573); it and similar articles evoked letters of support from both scientists and laymen.

Wiener's concern with the ramifications of his scientific work was not limited to the military. He exchanged letters and met with Walter Reuther in order to discuss his fears of future unemployment when the automatic factory became operative. Articles that explained automatization and some of its social effects are also included in Wiener's writings (Series 3). During his last fifteen years he became increasingly involved with the development of prosthetic devices and with other health-related problems. While refusing to work for the military, he was always ready to assist the Veteran's Administration.

From the writing of "Unconventionality" (folder 494) in 1918 at his father's suggestion, Wiener never gave up popular writing. Cybernetics had unexpectedly caught the public's eye. Wiener's correspondence markedly increased after its publication in 1948, and many letters were from strangers who wanted to know more about Wiener and his philosophy. This increase in "fan mail" was noted by his publishers who encouraged Wiener to write more popular articles and books. From the correspondence, it appears that Wiener enjoyed a friendly relationship with Henry Simon of Simon and Schuster and with Jason Epstein of Doubleday and Company, Inc. The collection contains book drafts from a number of his works, including The Human Use of Human Beings(folders 639-653a.) and an unpublished book called The Philosophy of Invention(folders 752-757).

Wiener was also interested in writing's entertainment value. He wrote science fiction, novels and two autobiographies. Some of his ventures were not successful. He wrote to Orson Welles on June 28, 1941, suggesting a movie plot that was rejected but that eventually led to his own book The Tempter(folders 839-861). With Jason Epstein's encouragement, Wiener and Isaac Asimov tried to write a science fiction story which never came to fruition.

Like all public figures, Wiener received some crank mail and articles (see Series 4) from people who hoped that he shared their beliefs. The word that he coined, "cybernetics," became vulgarized in the 1950s and Wiener was erroneously identified with social movements and thoughts that he knew nothing about. For example, many people thought that Wiener founded the Dianetics movement (which later became the Church of Scientology). The true founder, L. Ron Hubbard, did not discourage this belief for a while because Wiener was a valuable, albeit false, ally (see correspondence for 1950-1951). For the most part, Wiener's "fan mail" consisted of letters of admiration to which Wiener often replied.

Materials received from Mrs. Margaret E. Wiener in 1971 consist of 35 volumes of foreign language editions of Wiener's books, nine audio tapes of colloquiums and lectures given by Wiener; and a motion picture film of a Japanese television interview of Norbert and Margaret Wiener.