Clifford Alan Pickover (born August 15, 1957) is an American author, editor, and columnist in the fields of

science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

innovation Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or service (economics), services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a n ...

, and

creativity Creativity is the ability to form novel and valuable Idea, ideas or works using one's imagination. Products of creativity may be intangible (e.g. an idea, scientific theory, Literature, literary work, musical composition, or joke), or a physica ...

. For many years, he was employed at the

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown, New York, where he was editor-in-chief of the ''

IBM Journal of Research and Development ''IBM Journal of Research and Development'' is a former, peer-reviewed bimonthly scientific journal covering research on information systems. This Journal has ceased production in 2020. According to the ''Journal Citation Reports'' in 2019, the jo ...

''. He has been granted more than 700 U.S. patents, is an elected Fellow for the

Committee for Skeptical Inquiry The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), formerly known as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), is a program within the U.S. non-profit organization Center for Inquiry (CFI), which seeks to " ...

, and is author of more than 50 books, translated into more than a dozen languages. Pickover.com

Life, education and career

Pickover graduated first in his class from Franklin and Marshall College, after completing the four-year undergraduate program in three years. He received his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in 1982 from

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

's Department of Molecular Biophysics and

Biochemistry Biochemistry, or biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology, a ...

, where he conducted research on

X-ray An X-ray (also known in many languages as Röntgen radiation) is a form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than those of ultraviolet rays and longer than those of gamma rays. Roughly, X-rays have a wavelength ran ...

scattering and protein structure.Clifford A. Pickover – Biographical Sketch
Retrieved July 8, 2008. Pickover was elected as a Fellow for the

for his "significant contributions to the general public's understanding of science, reason, and critical inquiry through their scholarship, writing, and work in the media." Other Fellows have included

Carl Sagan Carl Edward Sagan (; ; November 9, 1934December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is his research on the possibility of extraterrestrial life, including e ...

and

Isaac Asimov Isaac Asimov ( ; – April 6, 1992) was an Russian-born American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. H ...

. He has been awarded almost 700 United States patents, and his '' The Math Book'' was winner of the 2011 Neumann Prize. He joined IBM at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in 1982, as a member of the

speech synthesis Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal langua ...

group and later worked on the design-automation workstations. For much of his career, Pickover has published technical articles in the areas of

scientific visualization Scientific visualization ( also spelled scientific visualisation) is an interdisciplinary branch of science concerned with the visualization of scientific phenomena. Michael Friendly (2008)"Milestones in the history of thematic cartography, st ...

, computer art, and

recreational mathematics Recreational mathematics is mathematics carried out for recreation (entertainment) rather than as a strictly research-and-application-based professional activity or as a part of a student's formal education. Although it is not necessarily limited ...

. He is currently an associate editor for the scientific journal '' Computers and Graphics'' and is an editorial board member for ''Odyssey'' and ''Leonardo''. He is also the Brain-Strain columnist for ''Odyssey'' magazine, and, for many years, he was the Brain-Boggler columnist for ''Discover'' magazine. Pickover has received more than 100 IBM invention achievement awards, three research division awards, and four external honor awards.

Work

Pickover's primary interest is in finding new ways to expand creativity by melding art, science, mathematics, and other seemingly disparate areas of human endeavor. In ''The Math Book'' and his companion book ''The Physics Book'', Pickover explains that both mathematics and physics "cultivate a perpetual state of wonder about the limits of thoughts, the workings of the universe, and our place in the vast space-time landscape that we call home." Pickover is an inventor with over 700

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

s, the author of puzzle calendars, and puzzle contributor to magazines geared to children and adults. His Neoreality and Heaven Virus science-fiction series explores the fabric of reality and religion. Pickover is author of hundreds of technical papers in diverse fields, ranging from the creative visualizations of fossil seashells, genetic sequences, cardiac and speech sounds, and virtual caverns and lava lamps, to fractal and mathematically based studies. He also has published articles in the areas of skepticism (e.g. ESP and Nostradamus), psychology (e.g. temporal lobe epilepsy and genius), and technical speculation (e.g. "What if scientists had found a computer in 1900?" and "An informal survey on the scientific and social impact of a soda can-sized super-super computer"). Additional visualization work includes topics that involve breathing motions of proteins, snow-flake like patterns for speech sounds, cartoon-face representations of data, and biomorphs. Pickover has also written extensively on the reported experiences of people on the psychotropic compound DMT. Such apparent entities as Machine Elves are described as well as "Insects From A Parallel Universe". On November 4, 2006, he began Wikidumper.org, a popular blog featuring articles being considered for deletion by

English Wikipedia The English Wikipedia is the primary English-language edition of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on 15 January 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition. English Wikipedia is hosted alongside o ...

Pickover stalks

Pickover stalks are certain kinds of details that are empirically found in the

Mandelbrot set The Mandelbrot set () is a two-dimensional set (mathematics), set that is defined in the complex plane as the complex numbers c for which the function f_c(z)=z^2+c does not Stability theory, diverge to infinity when Iteration, iterated starting ...

in the study of fractal geometry. In the 1980s, Pickover proposed that experimental mathematicians and computer artists examine the behavior of orbit trajectories for the Mandelbrot set in order to study how closely the orbits of interior points come to the x and y axes in the complex plane. In some renditions of this behavior, the closer that the point approaches, the higher up the color scale, with red denoting the closest approach. The logarithm of the distance is taken to accentuate the details. This work grew from his earlier work with Julia sets and "Pickover biomorphs," the latter of which often resembled microbes.Linas Vepstas (1997)
"Interior Sketchbook Diary"
Retrieved July 8, 2008.

Frontiers of Scientific Visualization

In "Frontiers of Scientific Visualization" (1994) Pickover explored "the art and science of making the unseen workings of nature visible". The books contains contributions on "Fluid flow, fractals, plant growth, genetic sequencing, the configuration of distant galaxies, virtual reality to artistic inspiration", and focuses on use of computers as tools for simulation, art and discovery.

Visualizing Biological Information

In "Visualizing Biological Information" (1995) Pickover considered "biological data of all kinds, which is proliferating at an incredible rate". According to Pickover, "if humans attempt to read such data in the form of numbers and letters, they will take in the information at a snail's pace. If the information is rendered graphically, however, human analysts can assimilate it and gain insight much faster. The emphasis of this work is on the novel graphical and musical representation of information containing sequences, such as DNA and amino acid sequences, to help us find hidden pattern and meaning".

Vampire numbers and other mathematical highlights

In mathematics, a vampire number or ''true vampire number'' is a composite

natural number In mathematics, the natural numbers are the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, and so on, possibly excluding 0. Some start counting with 0, defining the natural numbers as the non-negative integers , while others start with 1, defining them as the positive in ...

''v'', with an even number of digits ''n'', that can be factored into two

integers An integer is the number zero (0), a positive natural number (1, 2, 3, ...), or the negation of a positive natural number (−1, −2, −3, ...). The negations or additive inverses of the positive natural numbers are referred to as negative in ...

''x'' and ''y'' each with ''n''/2 digits and not both with trailing zeroes, where ''v'' contains all the digits from ''x'' and from ''y'', in any order. ''x'' and ''y'' are called the ''fangs''. As an example, 1260 is a vampire number because it can be expressed as 21 × 60 = 1260. Note that the digits of the factors 21 and 60 can be found, in some scrambled order, in 1260. Similarly, 136,948 is a vampire because 136,948 = 146 × 938. Vampire numbers first appeared in a 1994 post by Clifford A. Pickover to the

Usenet Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...

group sci.math, and the article he later wrote was published in chapter 30 of his book ''Keys to Infinity''. In addition to "Vampire numbers", a term Pickover actually coined, he has coined the following terms in the area of mathematics: Leviathan number, factorion, Carotid–Kundalini function and fractal, batrachion, Juggler sequence, and Legion's number, among others. For characterizing noisy data, he has used Truchet tiles and Noise spheres, the later of which is a term he coined for a particular mapping, and visualization, of noisy data to spherical coordinates. In 1990, he asked "Is There a Double Smoothly Undulating Integer?", and he computed "All Known Replicating Fibonacci Digits Less than One Billion". With his colleague John R. Hendricks, he was the first to compute the smallest perfect (nasik) magic tesseract. The "Pickover sequence" dealing with e and pi was named after him, as was the "Cliff random number generator" and the Pickover attractor, sometimes also referred to as the Clifford Attractor.

Culture, religion, belief

Starting in about 2001, Pickover's books sometimes began to include topics beyond his traditional focus on science and mathematics. For example, ''Dreaming the Future'' discusses various methods of divination that humans have used since stone-age times. ''The Paradox of God'' deals with topics in religion. Perhaps the most obvious departure from his earlier works includes ''Sex, Drugs, Einstein, and Elves: Sushi, Psychedelics, Parallel Universes, and the Quest for Transcendence'', which explores the "borderlands of science" and is "part memoir and part surrealist perspective on culture.". Pickover follows-up his "quest for transcendence" and examination of popular culture with ''A Beginner's Guide to Immortality: Extraordinary People, Alien Brains, and Quantum Resurrection''.

History of science and mathematics

Starting in 2008, Pickover's books began to focus on the history of science and mathematics, with such titles as '' Archimedes to Hawking'', as well as '' The Math Book'', '' The Physics Book'', and '' The Medical Book''—a trilogy of more than 1,500 pages that presents various historical milestones, breakthroughs, and curiosities.

WikiDumper.org

Wikidumper.org is a website created by Pickover that promises to permanently record a snapshot of the "best of the English Wikipedia rejects", articles that are slated for deletion at the English Wikipedia. WikiDumper was launched on November 4, 2006, and accepts user submissions. Although the site doesn't specify its criteria for inclusion, many of its articles don't

cite To cite is to quote or mention a source. CITE or Cite may refer to: * Cite (cycling team), Italy * Cite (magazine), ''Cite'' (magazine), an American architecture quarterly * CITE-FM, a Canadian radio station * Center for Innovation Testing and Ev ...

their sources. The site has been criticized as likely to be less accurate than English Wikipedia.

Publications

Pickover is author of over forty books on such topics as computers and

art Art is a diverse range of cultural activity centered around ''works'' utilizing creative or imaginative talents, which are expected to evoke a worthwhile experience, generally through an expression of emotional power, conceptual ideas, tec ...

black hole A black hole is a massive, compact astronomical object so dense that its gravity prevents anything from escaping, even light. Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will form a black hole. Th ...

s, human behavior and intelligence,

time travel Time travel is the hypothetical activity of traveling into the past or future. Time travel is a concept in philosophy and fiction, particularly science fiction. In fiction, time travel is typically achieved through the use of a device known a ...

alien life Extraterrestrial life, or alien life (colloquially, aliens), is life that originates from another world rather than on Earth. No extraterrestrial life has yet been scientifically conclusively detected. Such life might range from simple forms ...

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein (14 March 187918 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence f ...

religion Religion is a range of social system, social-cultural systems, including designated religious behaviour, behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, religious text, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics in religion, ethics, or ...

dimethyltryptamine Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), also known as ''N'',''N''-dimethyltryptamine (''N'',''N''-DMT), is a Psychedelic drug, serotonergic hallucinogen and Investigational New Drug, investigational drug of the substituted tryptamine, tryptamine family tha ...

elves, parallel universes, the nature of

genius Genius is a characteristic of original and exceptional insight in the performance of some art or endeavor that surpasses expectations, sets new standards for the future, establishes better methods of operation, or remains outside the capabiliti ...

, and

.His books have been translated into French,

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

, Italian, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, Polish, Spanish and Turkish.

Books

* 1990. ''Computers, Pattern, Chaos, and Beauty''. St. Martin's Press. * 1991. ''Computers and the Imagination''. St. Martin's Press. * 1992. ''Mazes for the Mind''. St. Martin's Press. * 1994. ''Chaos in Wonderland''. St. Martin's Press. * 1995. ''Keys to Infinity''. Wiley. * 1996. ''Black Holes: A Traveler's Guide''. Wiley. * 1997. ''The Alien IQ Test''. Basic Books. * 1997. ''The Loom of God''. Plenum. * 1998. ''Spider Legs''. With

Piers Anthony Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob (born August 6, 1934) is an American author in the science fiction and fantasy genres, publishing under the name Piers Anthony. He is best known for his long-running novel series set in the fictional realm of Xan ...

TOR. * 1998. ''The Science of Aliens''. Basic Books. * 1998. ''Time: A Traveler's Guide''. Oxford University Press. * 1999. ''Strange Brains and Genius: The Secret Lives of Eccentric Scientists and Madmen'', Harper Perennial/Quill, * 1999. ''Surfing Through Hyperspace''. Oxford University Press. * 2000. ''Cryptorunes: Codes and Secret Writing''. Pomegranate. * 2000. ''The Girl Who Gave Birth to Rabbits''. Prometheus. * 2000. ''Wonders of Numbers''. Oxford University Press. * 2001. ''Dreaming the Future''. Prometheus. * 2001. ''The Stars of Heaven''. Oxford University Press. * 2002. ''The Zen of Magic Squares, Circles, and Stars''. Princeton University Press. * 2002. ''The Mathematics of Oz''. Cambridge University Press. * 2002. ''The Paradox of God and the Science of Omniscience''. St. Martin's Press. * 2003. ''Calculus and Pizza''. John Wiley & Sons. * 2005. ''Sex, Drugs, Einstein, and Elves''. Smart Publications. * 2005. ''A Passion for Mathematics'', John Wiley & Sons. * 2006. ''The Mobius Strip'', Thunder's Mouth Press. * 2007. ''A Beginner's Guide to Immortality''. Thunder's Mouth Press. * 2007. ''The Heaven Virus''. Lulu. * 2008. ''Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them''. Oxford University Press. * 2009. ''Jews in Hyperspace''. Kindle Edition. * 2009. ''The Loom of God''. Sterling Publishing. * 2009. '' The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics''. Sterling Publishing. * 2011. ''The Physics Book: From the Big Bang to Quantum Resurrection''. Sterling Publishing. * 2012. ''The Medical Book: From Witch Doctors to Robot Surgeons''. Sterling Publishing. * 2012. ''Brain Strain: A Mental Muscle Workout That's Fun!''. Cricket Media. * 2013. ''The Book of Black: Black Holes, Black Death, Black Forest Cake and Other Dark Sides of Life'', Calla Editions. * 2014. ''The Mathematics Devotional: Celebrating the Wisdom and Beauty of Mathematics''. Sterling Publishing. . * 2015. ''The Physics Devotional: Celebrating the Wisdom and Beauty of Physics''. Sterling Publishing . * 2015. ''Death and the Afterlife: A Chronological Journey, from Cremation to Quantum Resurrection''. Sterling Publishing. * 2018. ''The Science Book: From Darwin to Dark Energy''. Sterling Publishing. * 2019. ''Artificial Intelligence: An Illustrated History, From Medieval Robots to Neural Networks''. Sterling Publishing. * ''Mind-Bending Puzzles'' (calendars & cards), Pomegranate, each year

Neoreality science fiction series

* 2002. ''Liquid Earth''. The Lighthouse Press, Inc. * 2002. ''The Lobotomy Club''. The Lighthouse Press, Inc. * 2002. ''Sushi Never Sleeps''. The Lighthouse Press, Inc. * 2002. ''Egg Drop Soup''. The Lighthouse Press, Inc.

Edited collections

* 1992. ''Spiral Symmetry'', World Scientific. * 1993. ''Visions of the Future'': St. Martin's Press. * 1994. ''Frontiers of Scientific Visualization''. Wiley. * 1995. ''Future Health: Computers & Medicine in the 21st Century''. St. Martin's Press. * 1995. 'The Pattern Book: Fractals, Art, and Nature''. World Scientific. * 1995. ''Visualizing Biological Information''. World Scientific. * 1996. ''Fractal Horizons''. St. Martin's Press, * 1998. ''Chaos and Fractals''. Elsevier.

References

External links

Personal website
a blog which regularly posts his links of interest
Radio Interview
from '' This Week in Science'' July 11, 2006, broadcast
The Wikipedia Knowledge Dump (WikiDumper.org)
Pickover's blog regarding English Wikipedia's articles slated for deletion * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Pickover, Clifford A. 1957 births Living people 20th-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers American science writers American science fiction writers American columnists American skeptics Franklin & Marshall College alumni IBM employees Data and information visualization experts Mathematics writers Mathematics popularizers Recreational cryptographers Novelists from New York (state) Yale University alumni American academic journal editors American male novelists 20th-century American male writers American male non-fiction writers 21st-century American male writers Discover (magazine) people