Stephen Wolfram was born in London and educated at Eton, Oxford, and Caltech. He received his PhD in theoretical physics in 1979 at the age of 20, and in the early 1980s made a series of discoveries which launched the field of complex systems research. Starting in 1986 he created Mathematica, the primary software system now used for technical computing worldwide, and the tool which made "A New Kind of Science" possible. Wolfram is the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, Inc. --the world's leading technical software company. [He is also the creator of the WolframAlpha computational knowledge engine launched in 2009.]