Editing Christopher Langton (section)

{{short description|American computer scientist}}
{{BLP sources|date=October 2019}}
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{{Infobox scientist
|name              = Christopher Langton
|image             = Langtonsmall2.png
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|caption           = Chris Langton at SFI, 1989
|birth_date        = 1948/1949
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|citizenship       =
|nationality       = American
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|alma_mater        = [[University of Michigan]]
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|notable_students  =
|known_for         = [[Artificial life]] research<br />[[Langton's loops]]<br />[[Langton's ant]]
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'''Christopher Gale Langton''' (born 1948/49) is an American [[computer scientist]] and one of the founders of the field of [[artificial life]].<ref>Christopher G Langton (1998). ''Artificial life: an overview''. MIT Press. {{ISBN|0-262-62112-6}}.</ref> He coined the term in the late 1980s<ref>Mohan Matthen et al. (2007). ''Philosophy of biology''. Elsevier, 2007. {{ISBN|0-444-51543-7}}. p. 585.</ref> when he organized the first "Workshop on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems" (otherwise known as Artificial Life I) at [[Los Alamos National Laboratory]] in 1987.<ref>{{cite book |publisher=Addison-Wesley |isbn=0-201-09346-4 |editor=Christopher G. Langton |title=Artificial Life: The proceedings of an interdisciplinary workshop on the synthesis and simulation of living systems, held September, 1987, in Los Alamos, New Mexico |location=Reading, MA |series=Santa Fe Institute studies in the sciences of complexity |volume=6 |year=1989 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/artificiallifepr00inte }}</ref>  Following his time at Los Alamos, Langton joined the [[Santa Fe Institute]] (SFI), to continue his research on artificial life. He left SFI in the late 1990s, and abandoned his work on artificial life, publishing no research since that time.

He was profiled extensively in chapters 6 and 8 of the book Complexity (1993), by M. Mitchell Waldrop.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Waldrop |first=M.Mitchell |title=Complexity - The emerging science at the edge of order and chaos |publisher=Simon & Schuster |year=1993 |isbn=0-671-87234-6}}</ref>