Ashby, William Ross

Ashby, William Ross 

Born Apr. 6, 1904, in London. British psychiatrist and specialist in cybernetics.

Ashby graduated from Cambridge University and from 1930 worked as a psychiatrist. He was director of the Burden Neurological Institute in Bristol in 1959–60. Beginning in 1960 he was professor of cybernetics and psychiatry at the University of Illinois (Urbana, USA). His principal works deal with the brain, with the principles of self-organization, and with adaptive processes. He invented the homeostat in 1948.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
“Skhema usilitelia myslitel’nykh sposobnostei.” In the collection Avtomaty. Moscow, 1956.
Vvedenie v kibernetiku. Moscow, 1959.
Konstruktsiia mozga: Proiskhozhdenie adaptivnogo povedeniia. Moscow, 1964.
“Kibernetika segodnia i ee budushchii vklad v tekhnicheskie nauki.” In M. Taube, Vychislitel’nye mashiny i zdravyi smysl. Moscow, 1964.
“Printsipy samoorganizatsii.” In the collection Printsipy samoorganizatsii. Moscow, 1966.