Conrad Wolfram (born 10 June 1970) is a British technologist and businessman known for his work in information technology and mathematics education reform. In June 2020, Wolfram released his first book, '' The Math(s) Fix: An Education Blueprint for the AI Age''.

Education and early life

Born in

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

, England, in 1970, Wolfram was educated at

Dragon School The Dragon School is a private school across two sites in Oxford, England. The Dragon Pre-Prep (children aged 4–7) and Prep School (children aged 8–13) are both co-educational schools. The Dragon Prep School was founded in 1877 as the Oxfo ...

and

Eton College Eton College ( ) is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school providing boarding school, boarding education for boys aged 13–18, in the small town of Eton, Berkshire, Eton, in Berkshire, in the United Kingdom. It has educated Prime Mini ...

where he learned to program on a

BBC Micro The BBC Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a family of microcomputers developed and manufactured by Acorn Computers in the early 1980s as part of the BBC's Computer Literacy Project. Launched in December 1981, it was showcased across severa ...

. He was an undergraduate student at

Pembroke College, Cambridge Pembroke College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college is the third-oldest college of the university and has over 700 students and fellows. It is one of the university's larger colleges, with buildings from ...

where he studied the

Natural Sciences tripos The Natural Sciences Tripos is the framework within which most of the science at the University of Cambridge is taught. The tripos includes a wide range of Natural Sciences from physics, astronomy, and geoscience, to chemistry and biology, whi ...

graduating with a

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA or AM) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Those admitted to the degree have ...

degree from the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

Career

Wolfram has been a proponent of Computer-Based Math—a reform of

mathematics education In contemporary education, mathematics education—known in Europe as the didactics or pedagogy of mathematics—is the practice of teaching, learning, and carrying out Scholarly method, scholarly research into the transfer of mathematical know ...

to "rebuild the curriculum assuming computers exist." and is the founder of computerbasedmath.org. He argues, "There are a few cases where it is important to do calculations by hand, but these are small fractions of cases. The rest of the time you should assume that students should use a computer just like everyone does in the real world." And that "School mathematics is very disconnected from mathematics used to solve problems in the real world". In an interview with the Guardian he described the replacement of hand calculation by computer use as "democratising expertise". He argues that "A good guide to how and what you should do with a computer in the classroom is what you'd do with it outside. As much as possible, use real-world tools in the classroom in an open-ended way not special education-only closed-ended approaches." In 2009, he spoke about education reform at the

TEDx TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "Ideas Change Everything" (previously "Ideas Worth Sprea ...

Conference at the

EU Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it a ...

. and again at TED Global 2010 where he argued that "Maths should be more practical and more conceptual, but less mechanical," and that "Calculating is the machinery of math - a means to an end." In August 2012, he was a member of the judging panel at the

Festival of Code Rewired State was an organisation which ran a series of hack days for programmers and designers, focused on improving access to UK government open data and encouraging innovation in government services. Rewired State was founded by James Darli ...

, the culmination of

Young Rewired State Rewired State was an organisation which ran a series of hack days for programmers and designers, focused on improving access to UK government open data and encouraging innovation in government services. Rewired State was founded by James Darlin ...

2012. Wolfram is also part of Flooved advisory board. On 10 June 2020, Wolfram released his first book, ''The Math(s) Fix: An Education Blueprint for the AI Age''. The book summarises Wolfram's thoughts on the current state of

and sets out a vision for a new core subject based on

computational thinking Computational thinking (CT) refers to the thought processes involved in formulating problems so their solutions can be represented as computational steps and algorithms. In education, CT is a set of problem-solving methods that involve expressin ...

Wolfram Research

Wolfram co-founded Wolfram Research Europe Ltd. in 1991 and remains its CEO. In 1996, he additionally became Strategic and International Director of

Wolfram Research Wolfram Research, Inc. ( ) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational company that creates computational technology. Wolfram's flagship product is the technical computing program Wolfram Mathematica, first released on June 23, 1988. ...

, Inc., making him also responsible for Wolfram Research Asia Ltd, and communications such as the wolfram.com website. Wolfram Research was founded by his brother

Stephen Wolfram Stephen Wolfram ( ; born 29 August 1959) is a British-American computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is known for his work in computer algebra and theoretical physics. In 2012, he was named a fellow of the American Mathematical So ...

, the maker of

Mathematica Wolfram (previously known as Mathematica and Wolfram Mathematica) is a software system with built-in libraries for several areas of technical computing that allows machine learning, statistics, symbolic computation, data manipulation, network ...

software and the

Wolfram Alpha WolframAlpha ( ) is an answer engine developed by Wolfram Research. It is offered as an online service that answers factual queries by computing answers from externally sourced data. History Launch preparations for WolframAlpha began on Ma ...

knowledge engine. Wolfram has led the effort to move the use of Mathematica from pure computation system to development and deployment engine, instigating technology such as the Mathematica Player family and web Mathematica and by pushing greater automation within the system. He has also led the focus on interactive publishing technology with the stated aim of "making new applications as everyday as new documents" claiming that "If a picture is worth a thousand words, an interactive document is worth a thousand pictures." These technologies converged to form the

Computable Document Format Computable Document Format (CDF) is an electronic document format designed to allow authoring dynamically generated, interactive content. CDF was created by Wolfram Research, and CDF files can be created using Mathematica. As of 2021, the Wolfram ...

which Wolfram says can "transfer knowledge in a much higher-bandwidth way".Conrad Wolfram: computation will release data overload
Wired 28 June 2012

Personal life

Wolfram's father

Hugo Wolfram Hugo Wolfram ( ; 1925 – 15 September 2015) was an English businessman and novelist, of German Jewish origin. He served as managing director of the Lurex Company, makers of the fabric Lurex, and was the author of three novels including ''Into a ...

was a textile manufacturer and novelist (''Into a Neutral Country'') and his mother

Sybil Wolfram Sybil Wolfram (born Sybille Misch; 1 July 1931 – 26 July 1993) was an English philosopher and writer, of Austrian Jewish origin. She studied at Somerville College, Oxford and was a Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at Lady Margaret Hall at Univ ...

was a professor of philosophy at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

. He is the younger brother of

. Wolfram is married to primary care

ophthalmology Ophthalmology (, ) is the branch of medicine that deals with the diagnosis, treatment, and surgery of eye diseases and disorders. An ophthalmologist is a physician who undergoes subspecialty training in medical and surgical eye care. Following a ...

consultant A consultant (from "to deliberate") is a professional (also known as ''expert'', ''specialist'', see variations of meaning below) who provides advice or services in an area of specialization (generally to medium or large-size corporations). Cons ...

Stella Hornby and has a daughter, Sophia Wolfram.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wolfram, Conrad 1970 births Living people Businesspeople from Oxford People educated at The Dragon School People educated at Eton College Alumni of Pembroke College, Cambridge Businesspeople in information technology English businesspeople English Jews People associated with King's College London Wolfram Research people Mathematics education