Douglas Hofstadter

Professor of Computer Science at Indiana University, Douglas Hofstadter received the 1980 the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction for his book "Godel, Escher, Bach," which has been hailed as "a triumph of cleverness, a bravura performance, an incredible intellectual debut," and drew, from Scientific American magazine, the accolade: "Every few decades, an unknown author brings out a book of such depth, clarity, range, wit, beauty and originality that it is recognized at once as a major literary event. This is such a work." Hofstadter's research focuses on consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics. His book, Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language addresses the nature of language and the challenges of literary translation. Hofstadter himself has translated poems and novels from Russian, French and Italian. He has also reached thousands of readers through a monthly column in Scientific American. Douglas Hofstadter attended the Academy of Achievement's 1984 Summit in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as a recipient of the Academy's Golden Plate Award, along with his father, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Hofstadter. It was the first time in the history of the Academy that a father and son were honored together. In this audio podcast, recorded on that occasion, Douglas Hofstadter recalls the fascination that math, physics, philosophy and computer science have always held for him. He also describes recent advances in the study of artificial intelligence, memory and the mind.