ChrisLangton

Dr. Christopher Langton & "Life as it Could Be"

Chris Langton is universally recognized as the man who was most influential in bringing the field of ALife into being. In fact, he is credited with coining the term "artificial life". This was in 1987, when he organized the first-ever ALife conference, which took place in Los Alamos. He also organized the first three international workshops on Artificial Life, and was founding editor of the Artificial Life Journal.

Quick Bio:

• Born in 1948 in Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Undergraduate work: Anthropology / Philosophy (double major) at the University of Arizona
• Ph.D in CS from the University of Michigan -- May 1991
• "For recreation, Dr. Langton plays blues and blue-grass guitar, and drives a BMW motorcycle too fast."
• He is married, with two sons, ages 17 & 20.

Projects:

• /CellularAutomata : Self-reproducing cellular automata (1984)
• /EdgeOfChaos : "Computation at the Edge of Chaos" (Thesis, 1991)
• /Ant : Ants and Vants (1994)
• /Swarm : Swarm project (1996)
• Currently writing an "extensive, detailed book on the field of Artificial Life"

Some of His Papers:

• Langton, C. Self-Reproduction in Cellular Automata. Physica D 10, 135-144. 1984.
• Langton, C.G. Studying Artificial Life with Cellular Automata. Physica D 22. 1986.
• Langton, Christopher G. (ed.), Artificial Life. Redwood City: Addison-Wesley, 1987. (proceedings of the first conference)
• Langton, C. G. "Artificial Life." In Artificial Life, edited by C. G. Langton. SFI Studies in the Sciences of Complexity, Proc. Vol. VI, p. 1-47. Redwood City, CA: Addison-Wesley, 1989.
• Langton, C. Computation at the edge of chaos: Phase transitions and emergent computation. In Forest, S., ed., Emergent Computation, 12-37. MIT Press, 1991.
• Minar, N., Burkhart, R., Langton, C., Askenazi, M. "The Swarm Simulation System, A Toolkit for Building Multi-Agent Simulations". June 1996.
• Langton, C. Life at the edge of chaos. In : C.G. Langton, J.D. Farmer, S. Rasmussen and C. Taylor (eds.) Artificial Life II: Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity. Vol. 10, p. 41-91. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1992.
• Langton, Christopher G., ed. Artificial Life, an Overview. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997.

Other References:

• Biographical notes from various conferences: http://www.cyberbiology.org/langton.html (1998); http://www.lensventures.com/langton.html (2003).
• Beermann, M. and Van Foeken, N. "Langton's Ant: An Exercise in Machine Design." http://cse.unl.edu/~mbeerman/ant.html.
• Cohen, J. and Stewart, I.N. The Collapse of Chaos. New York: Viking, 1994.
• Detailed information about the implementation of Swarm: http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~comp4001/CxSys%20software/Reviews/s331902-20030824225722/
• Lancaster, Alex. Life at the Edge of Chaos. http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~alexl/cribbings-life.html.
• Osborn, Christopher D. Self-Reproducing Cellular Automata Loops (a variant that adds mutation to Langton's implementation). http://www.softrise.co.uk/srl/old/caworld.html.
• Some technical information on Langton Loops & Vants, from the Brunel University site: http://www.brunel.ac.uk/depts/AI/alife/al-loops.htm.
• Stewart, I. Mathematical recreations: The ultimate in anty-particles. Scientific American, July 1994, 104-107.
• Sutherland, S. "Generalized Ants." http://www.math.sunysb.edu/~scott/ants/.
• Swarm homepage: http://www.swarm.org.
• Waldrop, M. Mitchell. Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos. http://www.tnellen.com/ted/tc/complexity.html.