J. Doyne Farmer
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J. Doyne Farmer (1952) is an American physicist and entrepreneur, and one of the founding fathers of chaos theory. He was also a member of Eudaemonic Enterprises.
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[edit] Biography
Although born in Houston, Texas, he spent most of his early life in Silver City, New Mexico, where he first developed an interest in physics. He spent his first year of college at the University of Idaho and his second year at Stanford University, California. Doyne went to graduate school at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he studied chaos theory and the physics of roulette. He received his PhD in Physics there in 1981.
Doyne Farmer then took up a post-doctoral appointmment at the centre for non-linear studies at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and in 1988 became leader of the Complex Systems Group, Theoretical Division.
In 1991 Farmer gave up his position at Los Alamos to start Prediction Company, with Norman Packard and Jim McGill. The purpose of this company was to create automated trading systems for a variety of commodity and securities markets, making predictions of trends using principles of physics, particularly Chaos Theory.
[edit] Work
[edit] Eudaemonic Enterpises
The Eudaemons were a small group headed by graduate physics students Doyne Farmer and Norman Packard at the University of California Santa Cruz in the late 1970s. The group's immediate objective was to find a way to beat roulette, but a loftier objective was to use the money made from roulette to fund a scientific community. The name of the group was inspired by the eudaimonism philosophy.
While a graduate student Doyne Farmer and other students from the University of California, Santa Cruz, spent several years researching a physics-based system that could predict outcomes of roulette games. During this time the group built a series of computers that were capable of calculating the motion of a moving ball, and trials in Las Vegas showed success. However, because of technical faults with computer equipment, the success was only partial and the technology was not feasible to use to make large profits.
[edit] Prediction Company
The Prediction Company was founded in 1991 by Doyne Farmer, Norman Packard and Jim McGill to apply principles of physics and mathematics to the financial sector. From 1991 to 1999 Doyne held the position of Chief Scientist and from 1995 to 1999 the position of co-president.
[edit] Other interests
Farmer is a co-founder of the Atalaya Institute, a new and independent public policy institute in Santa Fe and is currently part of the steering committee.
