History
- John Von Neumann and “The General and Logical Theory of Automata”. Defined Automaton, suggested the connection to biological life, producing a cellular automaton that were both 1. self replicating and 2. Universal Turing machine.
- John Conway. Defined a cellular automaton rulset, named “Game of Life” that, after much experimentation, created an interesting balanced state of reproduction and decay
- Tommaso Toffoli: Proved CAs were reversible, an important condition for the “biological life and nature can be explained by simple rules like CAs”.
- Christopher Langton: Built the first self replicating artificial life on an Apple 2 in 1979.
- Stephen Wolfram: Extensive work on one dimensional CAs, including a classification scheme of 1. stabilise into a constant 2. stabilise into repeating patterns 3. evolved into chaos, or 4. produce long term complex dynamics with stable local structures (i.e. artificial life).
Resources
- Chapter 8 in “The Man from the Future” by Ananyo Bhattacharya writes about the history of artifical life and Von Neumann role in its inception.
- An interesting survey of self replicating machines, “Kinematic Self Replicating Machines” by Robert Freitas Jr and Ralph Merkle link