A Brilliant Mind and an Anguished Life

It is hardly the greatest scientific mystery of the 20th century, but it is a riddle just the same: why did Norbert Wiener – gray eminence of gray matter, inventor of cybernetics, founding theorist of the information age – abandon his closest young colleagues just as they were about to embark on an exciting new collaboration on the workings of the brain?

Historians of science, and even some of Wiener’s associates, have long puzzled over this question. Now Ms. Conway and Mr. Siegelman offer an answer. In their new biography, they tell a tale of jealousy, false accusations of sexual misconduct and twisted family relations.

More From The NY Times. [Thanks Michael]