Stephen Wolfram: It was Steve Jobs who named 'Mathematica'

The creator of the answer engine in Siri writes about his long relationship with Jobs

Wolfram. Photo: Creative Commons

There are a several novel anecdotes about Apple's (AAPL) late CEO in the piece British scientist Stephen Wolfram wrote for Saturday's The Guardian.

• While at NeXT, Jobs took great interest in Wolfram's breakthrough algebra-solving computer program and even came up with a name for it: Mathematica
• When Wolfram asked Jobs to blurb A New Kind of Science, Wolfram's 2002 book about how nature acts like a digital system obeying simple programs, Jobs demurred: "Isaac Newton didn't have back-cover quotes; why should you?"
• Jobs chose Wolfram Alpha, rather than Google's (GOOG) search engine, as the answer engine in Siri, the iPhone 4S's digital assistant.
• At one visit during the NeXT years, Jobs apologized for becoming distracted. "He said he was going out that night on a date with a woman he'd met the day before and suddenly all his confidence as a technologist and businessman melted away." That woman was Laurene Powell.

Wolfram, who received a Ph.D. in particle physics at age 20 and one of the first McCarthur "genius" grants at age 21, writes of the awe in which he held Jobs' intellect:

One of the things I always admired about Steve Jobs was his clarity of thought. Time and again, he would take a complex situation, understand its essence and use that understanding to make a bold and unexpected move.

Not a bad blurb. You can read Wolfram's full piece here.

Posted in: A New Kind of Science, Apple, iPhone, Laurene Powell, Mathematica, New Kind of Science, NeXT, Siri, Stephen Wolfram, Steve Jobs, Wolfram Alpha

• Tim Cook and Jony Ive are 'joined at the hip,' says Steve Jobs' biographer

  But CEO Cook, according to Walter Isaacson, is Apple's new decider-in-chief

  One of the questions that lingers at the end of Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs is who at Apple (AAPL) is going to make the thousands of product decisions -- large and small -- that used to be made by Jobs himself.

  The issue is especially problematic because no one at Apple has the power or authority that its co-founder MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Nov 10, 2011 11:46 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Daily Show, Jonathan Ive, Laurene Powell, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Walter Isaacson

• Apple finds a use for some of those first-generation iPads

  Donates thousands to teachers in America's poorest schools

  Teach for America might sound like a fun way to spend a couple years after college, but it's a pretty tough gig. With just five-weeks training, recent graduates -- many from America's most elite colleges and universities -- are thrown into classrooms in some of the country's meanest, most-impoverished public schools.

  Into this improbable mix Apple (AAPL) has just added a few thousand iPads.

  It's MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Sep 20, 2011 2:22 PM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Education, iPad, Katie Remington, Laurene Powell, Schools, St. Louis, Steve Jobs, Tablets, Teach for America

• A peek at Steve Jobs' book jacket - front, back and spine

  The look of Walter Isaacson's bio will be as spare and restrained as any Apple product

  "The cover," writes Isaacson in private e-mail, "is the Albert Watson portrait taken for Fortune in 2009. The back is a Norman Seeff portrait of him in the lotus position holding the original Macintosh, which ran in Rolling Stone in January 1984. The title font is Helvetica. It will look as you see it, with MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Aug 16, 2011 7:39 AM ET
  Posted in: Amazon, Apple, Aspen Institute, Barnes & Noble, Biography, Laurene Powell, Simon & Schuster, Steve Jobs, Teach for America, Walter Isaacson