Bertrand du Castel is a French-American author and scientist who won in 2005 the Visionary Award
from Card Technology Magazine for pioneering the
Java CardJava Card refers to a technology that allows Java-dd applications to be run securely on smart cards and similar small memory footprint devices. Java Card is the tiniest of Java targeted for embedded devices. Java Card gives the user ability to program the device and make them application...
, which by 2007 had sold more than 3.5 billion
units worldwide. In 2008, du Castel and Timothy M. Jurgensen published
Computer Theology: Intelligent Design of the World Wide Web, a
theologyTheology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
of the
World Wide WebThe World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
based on a comparative study of human societies and computer networks.
Biography
Du Castel was born in 1952 in France a descendant of Louis-Eugène Cavaignac, who governed France as Prime Minister before being defeated by
Napoléon IIILouis-Napoléon Bonaparte was the President of the French Second Republic and as Napoleon III, the ruler of the Second French Empire. He was the nephew and heir of Napoleon I, christened as Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte...
, and Paul Dubois, whose
Joan of ArcSaint Joan of Arc, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans" , is a national heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in eastern France who claimed divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, which paved the way for the...
sculpture stands in Washington D.C. A graduate of
Ecole PolytechniqueThe École Polytechnique is a state-run institution of higher education and research in Palaiseau, Essonne, France, near Paris. Polytechnique is renowned for its four year undergraduate/graduate Master's program...
with a 1977 PhD from the
University of ParisThe University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
in
Theoretical Computer ScienceTheoretical computer science is a division or subset of general computer science and mathematics which focuses on more abstract or mathematical aspects of computing....
, he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the
IBMInternational Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
France Research Center before hiring with
SchlumbergerSchlumberger Limited is the world's largest oilfield services company. Schlumberger employs over 110,000 people of more than 140 nationalities working in approximately 80 countries...
in France in 1978. He emigrated to the United States in 1983 where he has lived in
AustinAustin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
, Texas since, becoming an American citizen in 1994.
In 2000, du Castel was invited by the
Association for the Advancement of Artificial IntelligenceThe Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence or AAAI is an international, nonprofit, scientific society devoted to advancing the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines...
to
make a presentation of
artificial intelligenceArtificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
advances in the industry that were original to academia. Consequently, du Castel was invited to present at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (2001),
Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyThe Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
(2001),
University of Texas at AustinThe University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
(2002),
Peking UniversityPeking University , colloquially known in Chinese as Beida , is a major research university located in Beijing, China, and a member of the C9 League. It is the first established modern national university of China. It was founded as Imperial University of Peking in 1898 as a replacement of the...
(2002),
Tsinghua UniversityTsinghua University , colloquially known in Chinese as Qinghua, is a university in Beijing, China. The school is one of the nine universities of the C9 League. It was established in 1911 under the name "Tsinghua Xuetang" or "Tsinghua College" and was renamed the "Tsinghua School" one year later...
(2002),
Purdue UniversityPurdue University, located in West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S., is the flagship university of the six-campus Purdue University system. Purdue was founded on May 6, 1869, as a land-grant university when the Indiana General Assembly, taking advantage of the Morrill Act, accepted a donation of land and...
(2002),
Grenoble Institute of Technology (2003),
University of ParisThe University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
(2004)
and
University of HamburgThe University of Hamburg is a university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by Wilhelm Stern and others. It grew out of the previous Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen and the Kolonialinstitut as well as the Akademisches Gymnasium. There are around 38,000 students as of the start of...
(2004),
which increasingly constituted the matter of a book on the relationship between religion and digital networks.
In 2005 du Castel joined with Timothy M. Jurgensen, author of two books on
computer securityComputer security is a branch of computer technology known as information security as applied to computers and networks. The objective of computer security includes protection of information and property from theft, corruption, or natural disaster, while allowing the information and property to...
, to write
Computer Theology: Intelligent Design of the World Wide Web, which uses theological principles to study the role of religion in computer networks, and reciprocally studies religion in the light of well-established computer concepts such as trust. The book eventually proposed in 2008 a reference for the field of Computer Theology, following the road traced earlier by Donald Knuth
and Anne Foerst,
aiming at a better understanding of computer
evolutionEvolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
as well as religion.
Positions
- Schlumberger
Schlumberger Limited is the world's largest oilfield services company. Schlumberger employs over 110,000 people of more than 140 nationalities working in approximately 80 countries...
FellowA fellow in the broadest sense is someone who is an equal or a comrade. The term fellow is also used to describe a person, particularly by those in the upper social classes. It is most often used in an academic context: a fellow is often part of an elite group of learned people who are awarded...
(2002–)
- Head of Research Axalto
Axalto has been a smart card manufacturer, that during its brief independent existence, with over 4,500 employees in 60 countries, was one of the world's leading providers of microprocessor cards and also a major supplier of point of sale terminals.Axalto's business covered the telecommunications,...
(2003–2006)
- Chairman of the Java Card
Java Card refers to a technology that allows Java-dd applications to be run securely on smart cards and similar small memory footprint devices. Java Card is the tiniest of Java targeted for embedded devices. Java Card gives the user ability to program the device and make them application...
Forum Technical Committee (1997–2006)
- Director and Vice-Chairman of the Petrotechnical Open Standards Consortium (1996–2002)
- Chairman and President of the WLAN Smart Card
A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card , is any pocket-sized card with embedded integrated circuits. A smart card or microprocessor cards contain volatile memory and microprocessor components. The card is made of plastic, generally polyvinyl chloride, but sometimes acrylonitrile...
consortium (2004–2006]
Publications
Book:
Main publications in computer securityComputer security is a branch of computer technology known as information security as applied to computers and networks. The objective of computer security includes protection of information and property from theft, corruption, or natural disaster, while allowing the information and property to...
, logicIn philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
, artificial intelligenceArtificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
, software engineeringSoftware Engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software, and the study of these approaches; that is, the application of engineering to software...
, and linguisticsLinguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
: