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The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) is a non-profit research institute located in Santa Fe
Santa Fe, New Mexico

Santa Fe is the Capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the List of cities in New Mexico and is the county seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 62,203 at the United States Census, 2000; the estimate for July 1, 2006, is 72,056....
 (New Mexico
New Mexico

New Mexico is a U. S. State located in the Southwestern United States of the United States. Inhabited by Native Americans in the United States populations for many centuries, it has also has been part of the Spanish Empire viceroyalty of New Spain, part of Mexico, and a U.S....
, United States
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
) and dedicated to the study of complex systems
Complex systems

Complex systems is a scientific field which studies the common properties of systems considered complex in nature, society and science. It is also called complex systems theory, complexity science, study of complex systems, sciences of complexity, non-equilibrium physics, and historical physics....
.

Santa Fe Institute was founded in 1984 by George Cowan
George Cowan

George A. Cowan is an United States Physical chemistry, a businessman and philanthropist. He conducted early research in the Manhattan Project. George served 39 years at Los Alamos National Laboratory as director of chemistry, associate director of research and senior laboratory fellow....
, David Pines
David Pines

David Pines is the Founding Director of the Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter and the International Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter , Distinguished Professor of Physics, UC Davis, Research Professor of Physics and Professor Emeritus of Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Center for Advanced Study, University of...
, Stirling Colgate
Stirling Colgate

Stirling Colgate was America's premier diagnostician of thermonuclear weapons at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. He was among the few that initially realized that the emissions of supernova could have set off American satellites spying on the Soviet Union and spark a third World War....
, Murray Gell-Mann
Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann is an United States physicist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the theory of particle physicss.Among his many accomplishments, he formulated the quark model of hadronic resonances, and identified the SU flavor symmetry of the light quarks, extending isospin to include strange quark, which he als...
, Nick Metropolis, Herb Anderson, Peter A. Carruthers, and Richard Slansky.






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Santa Fe Nm
The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) is a non-profit research institute located in Santa Fe
Santa Fe, New Mexico

Santa Fe is the Capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the List of cities in New Mexico and is the county seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 62,203 at the United States Census, 2000; the estimate for July 1, 2006, is 72,056....
 (New Mexico
New Mexico

New Mexico is a U. S. State located in the Southwestern United States of the United States. Inhabited by Native Americans in the United States populations for many centuries, it has also has been part of the Spanish Empire viceroyalty of New Spain, part of Mexico, and a U.S....
, United States
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
) and dedicated to the study of complex systems
Complex systems

Complex systems is a scientific field which studies the common properties of systems considered complex in nature, society and science. It is also called complex systems theory, complexity science, study of complex systems, sciences of complexity, non-equilibrium physics, and historical physics....
.

Overview

The Santa Fe Institute was founded in 1984 by George Cowan
George Cowan

George A. Cowan is an United States Physical chemistry, a businessman and philanthropist. He conducted early research in the Manhattan Project. George served 39 years at Los Alamos National Laboratory as director of chemistry, associate director of research and senior laboratory fellow....
, David Pines
David Pines

David Pines is the Founding Director of the Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter and the International Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter , Distinguished Professor of Physics, UC Davis, Research Professor of Physics and Professor Emeritus of Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Center for Advanced Study, University of...
, Stirling Colgate
Stirling Colgate

Stirling Colgate was America's premier diagnostician of thermonuclear weapons at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. He was among the few that initially realized that the emissions of supernova could have set off American satellites spying on the Soviet Union and spark a third World War....
, Murray Gell-Mann
Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann is an United States physicist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the theory of particle physicss.Among his many accomplishments, he formulated the quark model of hadronic resonances, and identified the SU flavor symmetry of the light quarks, extending isospin to include strange quark, which he als...
, Nick Metropolis, Herb Anderson, Peter A. Carruthers, and Richard Slansky. All but Pines and Gell-Mann were scientists with Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory

Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy United States Department of Energy National Labs, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC , located in Los Alamos, New Mexico....
.

SFI's original mission was to disseminate the notion of a separate interdisciplinary research area, complexity theory
Complex adaptive system

Complex adaptive systems are special cases of complex systems. They are complex in that they are diverse and made up of multiple interconnected elements and adaptive in that they have the capacity to change and learn from experience....
 referred to at SFI as "complexity science". Recently it has announced that its original mission to develop and disseminate a general theory of complexity has been realized. It noted that numerous complexity institutes and departments have sprung up around the world, including the following:
  • The CCS and CSCS at the University of Michigan
    University of Michigan

    The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan is a public university research university located in the state of Michigan. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan, which also includes two regional campuses in University of Michigan-Flint and University of Michigan-Dearborn....
    .
  • The CSE at UC Davis
    University of California, Davis

    The University of California, Davis is a public university research university located in Davis, California, and one of ten campuses in the University of California system....
     
  • The Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study
    Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study

    HistoryThe Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study of George Mason University was chartered in 1990 as a result of a bequest from Shelley Krasnow, a long-time resident of the National Capital Area....
     at George Mason University
    George Mason University

    George Mason University is a large public university with a main campus in unincorporated area Fairfax County, Virginia, Virginia, United States, south of and adjacent to the Fairfax, Virginia....
  • The New England Complex Systems Institute
    New England Complex Systems Institute

    The New England Complex Systems Institute is an American research institution dedicated to advancing the study of complex systems. It was founded in 1996 and is located in Cambridge, MA....
  • The Institute Para Limes, a European initiative based in the Netherlands


Some of the other accomplishments of the SFI are:
  • SFI's complexity research led to efforts to create artificial life
    Artificial life

    Artificial life is a field of study and an associated art form which examine systems related to life, its processes, and its evolution through simulations using computer models, robotics, and biochemistry....
     modeling real organisms and ecosystems in the 1980s and 1990s.
  • Foundational contributions to the complexity economics
    Complexity economics

    Complexity economics is the application of complexity science to the problems of economics. It is one of the four C's of a new paradigm surfacing in the field of economics....
     school of thought.
  • SFI is coordinating the "Evolution of Human Languages" project, an attempt to trace all human language to a common root (cf. Proto-World).


Resident faculty

  • Tanmoy Bhattacharya
  • Sam Bowles
    Samuel Bowles (economist)

    Samuel Bowles is an United States economist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught courses on microeconomics and the theory of institutions....
  • George Cowan
    George Cowan

    George A. Cowan is an United States Physical chemistry, a businessman and philanthropist. He conducted early research in the Manhattan Project. George served 39 years at Los Alamos National Laboratory as director of chemistry, associate director of research and senior laboratory fellow....
  • Jennifer A. Dunne
  • Douglas Erwin
    Douglas Erwin

    Douglas Erwin is a Paleobiology and Curator of Paleozoic Invertebrates at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History.He has written two books: Extinction: How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago in 2006, and The Great Paleozoic Crisis: Life and Death in the Permian in 1993....
  • J. Doyne Farmer
    J. Doyne Farmer

    J. Doyne Farmer is an United States physicist and entrepreneur, with interest in chaos theory and complexity. He was also a member of Eudaemonic Enterprises....
  • Jessica Flack


  • Murray Gell-Mann
    Murray Gell-Mann

    Murray Gell-Mann is an United States physicist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the theory of particle physicss.Among his many accomplishments, he formulated the quark model of hadronic resonances, and identified the SU flavor symmetry of the light quarks, extending isospin to include strange quark, which he als...
  • Bette Korber
  • David Krakauer
  • Steve Lansing
  • Cormac McCarthy
    Cormac McCarthy

    Cormac McCarthy, born Charles McCarthy , is an United States novelist and playwright. He has written ten novels in the Southern Gothic, Western fiction, and Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction genres, and has also written plays and screenplays....
  • John H. Miller
  • Cristopher Moore


  • D. Eric Smith
  • Geoffrey West
    Geoffrey West

    Geoffrey Brian West is an United States theoretical physicist, president and distinguished professor of the Santa Fe Institute....
  • Jon Wilkins
  • Chris Wood
  • Libby Wood


Other associated faculty

  • Phil Anderson
    Phil Anderson

    Philip Grant Anderson Order of Australia...
  • W. Brian Arthur
    W. Brian Arthur

    William Brian Arthur is an economist credited with influencing and describing the modern theory of increasing returns. He has lived and worked in Northern California for many years....
  • Per Bak
    Per Bak

    Per Bak was a Denmark Theoretical physics, attributed with the development of the concept of self-organized criticality....
  • John L. Casti
  • Jim Crutchfield
  • Walter Fontana
  • John Geanakoplos
  • Stephanie Forrest


  • Brian Goodwin
    Brian Goodwin

    Brian Carey Goodwin is a Canadian mathematician and a biologist, a Professor Emeritus at the Open University and a key founder of a branch of mathematical biology known as theoretical biology that focuses on the methods of mathematics and physics to understand processes in biology....
  • John H. Holland
    John Henry Holland

    John Henry Holland is an American scientist and Professor of Psychology and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor....
  • Stuart Kauffman
    Stuart Kauffman

    Stuart Alan A. Kauffman is an American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher concerning the origin of life on Earth. He is best known for arguing that the complexity of biological systems and organisms might result as much from self-organization and far-from-equilibrium dynamics as from Darwinian natural selection, as well as...
  • Christopher Langton
    Christopher Langton

    Christopher Langton is an American biologist and one of the founders of the field of artificial life. He coined the term in the late 1980s when he organized the first "International Conference on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems" at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1987....
  • Simon Levin
  • Robert May
  • Melanie Mitchell
    Melanie Mitchell

    Melanie Mitchell is a professor of computer science at Portland State University. She has worked at the Santa Fe Institute and Los Alamos National Laboratory....
  • Harold Morowitz


  • Mark Newman
    Mark Newman

    Mark Newman is a United Kingdom physics and Paul Dirac Professor of Physics at the University of Michigan, as well as an external faculty member of the Santa Fe Institute....
  • Alan Perelson
  • Ricard V. Solé
  • George Starostin
  • Chuck Stevens
    Chuck Stevens

    Charles Augustus Stevens, Jr. is a former first baseman in Major League Baseball who played for the Baltimore Orioles in parts of three seasons ....
  • Duncan Watts
  • David B. Weinberger
    David B. Weinberger

    David B. Weinberger is an American mathematician and mathematical financier....
  • Douglas R. White
    Douglas R. White

    Douglas R. White is an American complexity , Social anthropology, sociology, and social network researcher at the List of University of California, Irvine people....


In popular culture

The fictional mathematician Ian Malcolm
Ian Malcolm (Jurassic Park)

Ian Malcolm is a character from Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park novels. According to the acknowledgment at the end of the first book, Ian Malcolm's character is inspired by the works of Heinz Pagels....
 in Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton

John Michael Crichton, Doctor of Medicine , was an United States author, film producer, film director, and physician, best known for his work in the science fiction, medical fiction, and techno-thriller genres....
's Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park is a 1990 science fiction novel written by Michael Crichton. Often considered a cautionary tale on unconsidered biological tinkering in the same spirit as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, it uses the mathematical concept of chaos theory and its philosophical implications to explain the collapse of an amusement park showcasin...
 novels worked at the Santa Fe Institute.

See also

  • Complex systems
    Complex systems

    Complex systems is a scientific field which studies the common properties of systems considered complex in nature, society and science. It is also called complex systems theory, complexity science, study of complex systems, sciences of complexity, non-equilibrium physics, and historical physics....
  • Complex adaptive system
    Complex adaptive system

    Complex adaptive systems are special cases of complex systems. They are complex in that they are diverse and made up of multiple interconnected elements and adaptive in that they have the capacity to change and learn from experience....
  • Systems thinking
    Systems thinking

    Systems Thinking is any process of estimating or inferring how local policies, actions, or changes influences the state of the neighboring universe....
  • Dee Hock
    Dee Hock

    Dee Ward Hock is the founder and former CEO of the VISA . In 1968 Hock convinced Bank of America to give up ownership and control of their BankAmericard credit card program....


External links