So the thing I realized rather gradually - I must say starting about 20 years ago now that we know about computers and things - there's a possibility of a more general basis for rules to describe nature.

The application programming interface (API) allows other applications to extend and enhance Alpha. He produced a series of papers systematically investigating the class of elementary cellular automata conceiving the Wolfram code a naming system for one-dimensional cellular automata and a classification scheme for the complexity of their behavior. SMP was further developed and marketed commercially by Inference Corp.

Stephen Wolfram (born 29 August 1959) is a British scientist and the chief designer of the Mathematica software application and the Wolfram Alpha answer engine.