The thing that got me started on the science that I've been building now for about 20 years or so was the question of okay, if mathematical equations can't make progress in understanding complex phenomena in the natural world, how might we make progress?

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.