Ingo Rechenberg (20 November 1934 – 25 September 2021) was a German researcher and professor in the field of

bionics Bionics or biologically inspired engineering is the application of biological methods and systems found in nature to the study and design of engineering systems and modern technology. The word ''bionic'', coined by Jack E. Steele in August 195 ...

. Rechenberg was a pioneer of the fields of

evolutionary computation Evolutionary computation from computer science is a family of algorithms for global optimization inspired by biological evolution, and the subfield of artificial intelligence and soft computing studying these algorithms. In technical terms ...

and artificial evolution. In the 1960s and 1970s he invented a highly influential set of optimization methods known as

evolution strategies Evolution strategy (ES) from computer science is a subclass of evolutionary algorithms, which serves as an optimization (mathematics), optimization technique. It uses the major genetic operators mutation (evolutionary algorithm), mutation, recomb ...

(from German ''Evolutionsstrategie''). His group successfully applied the new algorithms to challenging problems such as

aerodynamic Aerodynamics () is the study of the motion of atmosphere of Earth, air, particularly when affected by a solid object, such as an airplane wing. It involves topics covered in the field of fluid dynamics and its subfield of gas dynamics, and is an ...

wing design. These were the first serious technical applications of artificial evolution, an important subset of the still growing field of

. Rechenberg was born in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

. He was educated at Technische Universität Berlin and at 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 ...

. Since 1972 he was a full professor at TU Berlin, where he headed the Department of Bionics and Evolution Techniques. His awards include the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Evolutionary Programming Society (US, 1995) and the Evolutionary Computation Pioneer Award of the IEEE Neural Networks Society (US, 2002). In 1954, Rechenberg also became world champion in the field of model aeroplanes. The Moroccan flic-flac spider, ''Cebrennus rechenbergi'', was named in his honor, as he first collected specimens in the Moroccan desert. Rechenberg died on 25 September 2021, at the age of 86.Ingo Rechenberg obituary
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Selected bibliography

* Ingo Rechenberg (1971): Evolutionsstrategie - Optimierung technischer Systeme nach Prinzipien der biologischen Evolution (PhD thesis). Reprinted by Fromman-Holzboog (1973). * Ingo Rechenberg: Evolutionsstrategie '94. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog 1994.

References

External links

*Rechenberg'
Bionic's Lab in Berlin
(in German) and i

1934 births 2021 deaths German computer scientists Scientists from Berlin Technische Universität Berlin alumni Academic staff of Technische Universität Berlin Alumni of the University of Cambridge {{Germany-academic-bio-stub