Stanisław Lem
Stanisław Lem was a Polish writer whose science fiction and essays examined technology and the nature of intelligence, including machine minds. Born in Lwów in 1921, he studied medicine, worked as a research assistant at Jagiellonian University, and published his first book, The Astronauts, in 1951. His novel Solaris appeared in 1961, and in Summa Technologiae in 1964 he named the field now called artificial intelligence "intellectronics" and wrote that machine intelligence would one day rival or surpass the human one. Golem XIV, a 1981 book of lectures by a superintelligent computer, followed; from 1982 he lived in Berlin and then Vienna before returning to Poland in 1988. He died in Kraków in 2006, and in 2021 Wrocław University of Science and Technology established the Lem Prize to mark his 100th birthday.
Timeline
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1921–1951
From medicine to The Astronauts
He is born in 1921 in Lwów, begins medical studies at Lwów University in 1940, and continues them at Jagiellonian University in Kraków after the family resettles there in 1945. From 1948 to 1950 he works as a scientific research assistant at Jagiellonian University, and in 1951 he publishes his first book, The Astronauts.
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1961–1972
The novel Solaris
In 1961 he publishes Solaris, the novel for which he is best known worldwide, in which the crew of a space station tries to communicate with a living planetary ocean. Andrei Tarkovsky's film adaptation wins a Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1972.
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1964
Summa Technologiae
He publishes Summa Technologiae in 1964, a book of philosophical essays on the technological future. It speculates that machine intelligence will rival or surpass the human one, and Lem calls the field "intellectronics" and virtual reality "phantomatics". The first complete English translation, by Joanna Zylinska, appears in 2013.
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1973–1981
Golem XIV and The Mind's I
Golem XIV, first published in part in 1973 in the collection Wielkość urojona (Imaginary Magnitude) and as a book in 1981, is a philosophical essay in the form of lectures by a superintelligent computer. In 1981, the philosophers Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett include three extracts from Lem's fiction in their anthology The Mind's I.
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1982–1988
Berlin and Vienna
After martial law is declared in Poland in 1982, he moves to West Berlin and becomes a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin). He then settles in Vienna and returns to Poland in 1988.
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1994–1996
Polish Academy and White Eagle
He becomes a member of the Polish Academy of Learning in 1994, and in 1996 he receives the Order of the White Eagle.
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2000–2006
Last essays and death
In 2000 he publishes Okamgnienie (Blink of an Eye), essays on technological progress since Summa Technologiae. In interviews in 2005 he holds that information technology drowns people in low-quality information and that truly intelligent robots are both undesirable and impossible to construct. He dies in Kraków in 2006 at the age of 84.
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2021
The Lem Prize
2021 is the Year of Stanisław Lem in Poland, as declared by the parliament. Wrocław University of Science and Technology, which awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1981, establishes the annual Lem Prize to commemorate his 100th birthday; it goes to a young European researcher whose work in science or engineering can benefit a civilization increasingly filled with technology.
Career
- From 1982Institute for Advanced Study, BerlinFellow
- 1948–1950Jagiellonian UniversityScientific research assistant
Education
- 1945University of Lviv
- From 1945Jagiellonian University
Colleagues
Sources and credits
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