Valentino Braitenberg

Valentine of Braitenberg ( born June 18, 1926 in Bolzano, † 9 September 2011 in Tübingen, also Valentin Braitenberg ) was a South Tyrolean brain researcher, cybernetician and writer.

Life

Valentine of Braitenberg was born as a son of the future senator Carl von Braitenberg 1926 in a South Tyrolean noble family, who was allowed to enter his first name only in the Italianate form "Valentino" in the birth register. This first contradiction is one of the triggers for the contradictory lifelong mental work Braitenbergs. The school was on the Italianate grammar school Bolzano, the German lessons took place in the Katakombenschule. In addition, he had trained as a violinist at the Conservatory in Bolzano. In contrast to the majority of South Tyrol his family opted as stayers. In the last year of the war he came in German - occupied South Tyrol as a result of resistant utterances in a penal company, which had to overcome in Innsbruck duds.

After the war he studied in Innsbruck initially physics, and later medicine and was a violist in the Tyrolean provincial orchestra. The doctoral and specialist training in neurology and psychiatry took place in Rome. After years of research in Germany and in the U.S. he completed his habilitation in cybernetics and information theory, and was professor of cybernetics at the Physics Institute of the University of Naples. From 1968 until his retirement in 1994 he was a director at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen and honorary professor at the universities of Tübingen and Freiburg. From 1998 to 2001 he was president of the Laboratorio di Scienze Cognitive, University of Trento, Rovereto.

In the robot scene Braitenberg was known for his book vehicle. In this he describes 14 examples of how equipped with sensors vehicles can react autonomously to environmental stimuli and how seemingly complex behavior can already be achieved by a surprisingly simple mechanisms.

Braitenberg was honorary doctorate from the University of Salzburg.

He lived with his wife, the daughter of Irene Mermet, in Tübingen, Meran and Naples. The TV presenter Zeno Braitenberg is his son.

Works

  • Information - the spirit in nature. With a foreword by Niels Birbaumer. Schattauer Verlag 2011 ISBN 978-3-7945-2768-7
  • The image of the world in mind. A Natural History of the Spirit. LIT Verlag 2004 ISBN 3-8258-7181-9
  • Vehicle. Experiments with artificial beings, LIT Verlag Münster 2004 ISBN 3-8258-7160-6
  • Vehicles: Experiments in synthetic psychology. MIT Press Cambridge 1984 ISBN 978-0-262-52112-3 (s)
  • Ill or The Angel and the philosophers. Novel. Haffmans Zurich 1999 ISBN 3-251-00424-7
  • Information Processing in the Cortex. Experiments and Theory ( with Ad Aertsen ), Springer-Verlag 1992 ISBN 3-540-55391-6
  • Cleverness (and other unscientific essay). Haffmans Zurich 1987 ISBN 3-251-00112-4
September 9 Italianization Operational Zone of the Alpine Foothills Autarky Integrated Authority File
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