IU Professor Known for Lifetime of Achievements

History was made this past spring when Dr. Douglas Hofstadter became the first IU faculty member to win a Pulitzer Prize and be elected into both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

Dr. Hofstadter, distinguished professor of cognitive science and computer science, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980 for his book, Gödel,Escher,Bach:An Eternal Golden Braid. This past April, he was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Herman B Wells was a member of the philosophical society and about 15 years ago attempted to get Hofstadter in but did not succeed.

Although he has written numerous books,  Hofstadter emphasized the point that while his books can have complicated sentence structures, he always includes plenty of examples, metaphors, and analogies to maintain a basic writing style.

While the Pulitzer Prize was a major accomplishment, the reasons for his election into the the academy and society extend far beyond that.

“I think both of those are for a lifetime of achievements,” Dr. Colin Allen, professor of history and philosophy of science and cognitive science said. “He’s clearly been very important in getting people interested in cognitive science and also reaching out to the general public and presenting science to them in a way that’s exciting and attractive.”

While Hofstadter recently made IU history, he still remains humble. Hofstadter said the French always associate people with the prize they won. In his case, they would refer to him as a Pulitzer Prize.

“I don’t like all the attention paid to the prizes,” Hofstadter said. “I owe a great deal to winning the prize, but I don’t want to be associated with that being a major part of my entity.”

Hofstadter has a wide range of interests that go beyond cognitive science.

“He brings a very broad perspective and wide range of interests,” Allen said. “Go to his classes and read his books. You’ll hear about poetry, the difficulty of translating one language to the other, music, and how the brain might manage to do any of these things.”

Along with his previously mentioned achievements, Hofstadter has also published books, composed music and is fluent in French and Italian.

 Hofstadter is familiar with a lot of Russian as well. He has been memorizing stanzas of Eugene Onegin, a novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin. Hofstadter said Russians adore Onegin and have memorized or at least always recognize the novel.  So far, Hofstadter said he has memorized 1,000 of the 5,000 lines.

Hofstadter also taught a class in Germany 30 years ago, spent five years studying Chinese and has snow skied down a double-black diamond run numerous times.

“He is a living, breathing Renaissance man,” said Dr. Robert Goldstone, professor of psychological and brain sciences and director of the cognitive science program. “From all perspectives, they had gone away, we had not had anybody like Doug for a couple hundred years who could make contributions in all these areas.”