Biological Computer Laboratory

The Biological Computer Laboratory ( BCL ) was a research institute of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois. It was founded on 1 January 1958 by the then Professor of Electrical Engineering Heinz von Foerster. He was head of the BCL until his retirement.

Focus of research on the BCL were the systems theory and specifically the area of self-organizing systems and the bionics, the attempt to analyze biological processes to formalize and to implement on computers. To bound the BCL to both the ideas of Warren McCulloch and to the Macy Conferences.

The BCL was in the first decade of its existence primarily a research laboratory without their own teaching. Although students could work on the BCL, but were not formed.

Until 1965, many researchers had a guest professorship at the BCL: W. William Ainsworth (England ), Alex Andrew (England), Ross Ashby (England), Gordon Pask (England), Gotthard Günther ( USA, Germany ), Dan Cohen ( Israel), Lars Löfgren (Sweden). Ashby ( 1961 ) and Gotthard Günther ( since 1967 ) received regular professorships, Löfgren and Pask remained even after their visiting professorship in constant contact with the BCL.

The BCL was financed mainly by external funds. In particular, the military organizations, the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy possessed in the 50s and 60s over large budgets for basic research, and also made for non-military ranges. Other donors were: Department of Health; Education and Welfare; Public Health Service; National Institutes of Health; National Science Foundation, Washington, Wenner -Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, New York; National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Electronics Research Center, Boston, Massachusetts; Office of Education, Bureau of Research, Washington, DC and POINT, San Francisco, California. By the early 1970s, the award of military research funding to projects had to be limited, provided the militarily usable results. Heinz von Foerster not succeeded in finding equivalent sponsors.

In 1974, the BCL was closed due to lack of research funds.

Source

Albert Müller: A brief history of the BCL .. In: Austrian Journal of History. 11 (1 ), 2000, pp. 9-30.