J. DOYNE FARMER, one of the pioneers of what has come to be called chaos theory, is McKinsey Professor, Sante Fe, Institute, and the co-founder and former co-president of Prediction Company, a firm whose business is automatic trading of financial instruments based on time series based directional forecasting methods.

Farmer was an Oppenheimer Fellow at the Center for Nonlinear Studies at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and later started the complex systems group, which came to include some of the rising stars in the field, such as Chris Langton, Walter Fontana, and Steen Rasmussen. In addition to his work on chaos, he has made important theoretical contributions to other problems in complex systems, including machine learning, a model for the immune system, and the origin of life.

Further reading on Edge: "The Second Law of Organization" - Chapter 22 in The Third Culture

Beyond Edge: J. Doyne Farmer Home Page