Douglas Hofstadter
Cognitive and computer scientist
Douglas Hofstadter is an American cognitive scientist who studies consciousness, analogy and creativity. He won a Pulitzer Prize for Gödel, Escher, Bach.
1 summary 18 min of listening
American Born 1945 in New York City, United States
About Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Hofstadter was born in 1945 and grew up on the Stanford University campus, where his father, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Hofstadter, was a professor. He graduated from Stanford in 1965 and earned a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Oregon in 1975. He is a Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he directs a research group on concepts and cognition known as the Fluid Analogies Research Group. His work has included computer models of analogy-making and perception, such as Copycat, built with Melanie Mitchell. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, published in 1979, earned him the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. I Am a Strange Loop, from 2007, received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology. Surfaces and Essences is also among his books. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences elected him a Fellow in 2009.