John von Neumann
Bio
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Von_Neumann.html
Mathematician (died 1957) who made major contributions to a vast range of fields including set theory, quantum mechanics, economics and game theory, and computer science. Explored cellular automatons and self assembly.

Stanislaw Ulam
Mathematician (died 1984) who worked in number theory, set theory, etc. Explored cellular automatons and self assembly with von Neumann.

John Conway
Bio
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Conway.html
Creator of the cellular automaton Game of Life

Benoît Mandelbrot
Father of fractal geometry who uses mathematical patterns in the study of various phenomena, including financial markets.

Stephen Wolfram
Personal web site
http://www.stephenwolfram.com/
Known for work in cellular automata, complexity theory, and computer algebra, and creator of the computer program Mathematica.

Gregory Chaitin
Home Page
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~chaitin/complete.html
Contributions to algorithmic information theory and the notion that extreme complexity can be generated by simple rules.

Rudy Rucker
Home Page
http://www.cs.sjsu.edu/faculty/rucker/
Mathematician and science fiction writer who’s book, The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul, suggests that the world is a computation.

Lee Smolin
Advocate for loop quantum gravity, an alternative to string theory.

Ray Kurzweil
About Ray Kurzweil
http://www.kurzweiltech.com/aboutray.html
Kurzweil’s information service
http://www.kurzweilai.net/index.html?flash=1
Advocate of the Singularity, the notion that technology develops exponentially, and that human and machine intelligence will merge.

David Deutsch
Web site
http://www.qubit.org/people/david/

Craig Venter
Venter institute
http://www.tigr.org/
I instrumental in mapping the human genome. Now discovering new genes and designing new organisms.

John Smart
Bio
http://www.accelerationwatch.com/bio_johnsmart.html
Futurist and scholar of accelerating change.

Eric Drexler
Home Page
http://e-drexler.com/p/idx04/00/0404drexlerBioCV.html
Pioneer in molecular nanotechnology.

Ralph Merkle
Home Page
http://www.merkle.com/
Pioneer in public key cryptography and a researcher and speaker on molecular nanotechnology and cryonics.

Jeffrey Kipnis
Faculty page
http://knowlton.osu.edu/default.asp?content=29&faculty=27
Additional faculty page
http://www.arch.columbia.edu/index.php?pageData=10516
Physicist and architectural theorist with an interest in genomics.

Karl Chu
Faculty Page
http://www.arch.columbia.edu/index.php?pageData=28630
Architect applying genomics to the generation of architecture and urban form.

Haresh Lalvani
Work in AlgoRhythms
http://www.milgo-bufkin.com/algorhythms/index.html
Architect/morphologist working in higher dimensions and is working to decode the morphological genome, the rules unlerlying all form.