Nils Aall Barricelli

Who was Nils Aall Barricelli?

Nils Aall Barricelli was a Norwegian-Italian mathematician.

Barricelli's early computer-assisted experiments in symbiogenesis and evolution are considered pioneering in artificial life research. Barricelli, who was independently wealthy, held an unpaid residency at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey in 1953, 1954, and 1956. He later worked at the University of California, Los Angeles, at Vanderbilt University, in the Department of Genetics of the University of Washington, Seattle and then at the Mathematics Institute of the University of Oslo. Barricelli published in a variety of fields including virus genetics, DNA, theoretical biology, space flight, theoretical physics and mathematical language.