Matthew Cook
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215463994
2008-05-28T09:23:12Z
Cst17
6898026
[[WP:UNDO|Undid]] revision 215463535 by [[Special:Contributions/212.219.203.238|212.219.203.238]] ([[User talk:212.219.203.238|talk]])
'''Matthew Cook''' (born [[February 7]], [[1970]]) is a mathematician and computer scientist who proved [[Stephen Wolfram]]'s conjecture that the [[Rule 110 cellular automaton]] is [[Turing-complete]]. Rule 110 is arguably the simplest Turing-complete system currently known.
==Biography==
Cook was born in [[Morgantown, West Virginia]] and grew up in [[Evanston, Illinois]]. His undergraduate studies were at the [[University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign|University of Illinois]] and the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics program. Throughout the 1980s Cook excelled in mathematics, winning national competitions and qualifying as a member of the six-person US team to the [[International Mathematical Olympiad]]. In 1990, Cook went to work for [[Wolfram Research]], makers of the computer algebra system [[Mathematica]]. He commenced his doctoral work in Computation and Neural Systems at [[Caltech]] in 1999 and received his Ph.D. in 2005.
==Work with Stephen Wolfram==
In the 1990s Cook worked as a research assistant to [[Stephen Wolfram]], assisting with work on Wolfram's book, ''[[A New Kind of Science]]''. Among other things, he developed a proof showing that the [[Rule 110]] cellular automaton is Turing-complete. Cook's proof of this fact, first conjectured by Wolfram in 1985, has been described as the main technical achievement in Wolfram's book.
Cook presented his proof at the [[Santa Fe Institute]] conference CA98 before the publishing of Wolfram's book — an action that led Wolfram Research to accuse Cook of violating his [[Non-disclosure agreement|NDA]] and resulted in the blocking of the publication of the proof in the conference proceedings.
''[[A New Kind of Science]]'' was released in 2002 with an outline of the proof. In 2004, Cook published his [http://www.complex-systems.com/Archive/hierarchy/abstract.cgi?vol=15&iss=1&art=01 proof] in Wolfram's journal ''[[Complex Systems (journal)|Complex Systems]]''.
==External links==
*[http://www.paradise.caltech.edu/~cook/ Personal Web Site]
*[http://www.math.usf.edu/~eclark/ANKOS_reviews.html Collection of Reviews of Wolfram's Book]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cook, Matthew}}
[[Category:American mathematicians]]
[[Category:California Institute of Technology alumni]]
[[Category:Cellular automatists]]
[[Category:People from Evanston, Illinois]]
[[Category:1970 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]