And, as someone who'd followed his progress since the mid-1980s, I was going to see some of it. Now he had supposedly returned to science to write a book that would make the biggest splash of all. He started a software company to sell Mathematica, a computer language he'd written that did for higher math what the spreadsheet did for business. Then he seemed to turn his back on that field. After laying the groundwork for a brilliant career in particle physics, he'd suddenly switched to the untraditional pursuit of studying complex systems, and, to the establishment's dismay, dared to pioneer the use of computers as a primary research tool. He'd been a child genius, and at 21 had been the youngest member of the storied first class of MacArthur genius awards. A series of much-discussed reinventions made him sort of the Bob Dylan of physics. Though physically unimposing with a soft, round face and a droll English accent polished at Eton and Oxford, Wolfram had already established himself as a larger-than-life figure in the gossipy world of science. Word had been out that Stephen Wolfram, the onetime enfant terrible of the science world, was working on a book that would Say It All, a paradigm-busting tome that would not only be the definitive account on complexity theory but also the opening gambit in a new way to view the universe. The inside story of how Stephen Wolfram went from boy genius to recluse to science renegade.
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