Twenty-Nine to Attend Computer Symposium For Faculty Members

Twenty-nine Faculty members from 14 different fields will meet during spring recess for a four-day symposium on "Digital Computers and Their Applications" at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Brookline.

The symposium, organized by Anthony G. Oettinger, associate professor of Linguistics and Applied Mathematics, is intended to bring together University Faculty members interested in computer research. By making the participants more aware of each other's techniques and problems, Oettinger hopes to stimulate new computer applications.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the program is the variety of disciplines to be represented. Members of the departments of Chemistry, Economics, Engineering and Applied Physics, Linguistics, Mathematics, Philosophy, Physics, Psychology, Social Relations, and Statistics will present papers.

There will also be speakers from the Business School, the Medical School, the School of Public Health, and the Graduate School of Education.

Topics to be discussed will range from a consideration of theorems of logic provable by machine to the use of computers in constructing models of human learning. Other papers will deal with computer techniques for establishing detailed geometrical structures of molecules and for the machine translation of languages.

Because the use of computers "forces one to think in very precise terms," Oettinger believes that they may eventually exert the kind of unifying influence on all the disciplines that mathematics exerts on the natural sciences.