Edward Fredkin (October 2, 1934 – June 13, 2023)[1] was an American computer scientist, physicist and businessman who was an early pioneer of digital physics.

While Konrad Zuse's book, Calculating Space (1969), mentioned the importance of reversible computation, the Fredkin gate represented the essential breakthrough.

He graduated from John Marshall High School a semester early so that he could earn money for Caltech tuition and living expenses.

[8] Fredkin's initial focus was physics; however, he became involved with computers in 1956 when he was sent by the Air Force, where he had trained as a jet pilot, to the MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

[10] In 1962, he founded Information International, Inc., an early computer technology company which developed high-precision film-to-digital scanners, as well as other leading-edge hardware.

[6] In 1968, Marvin Minsky (who he had met at BBN)[6] recruited Fredkin to work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a full professor despite the fact that he had never graduated from college.

[12]) He spent a year at Caltech as a Fairchild Distinguished Scholar, teaching Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman about computing and learning quantum mechanics from him.

[14] Fredkin has been a Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science at CMU,[9] and also a visiting scientist at MIT Media Laboratory.

[16] Fredkin served as the founder or CEO of a diverse set of companies, including Information International, Three Rivers Computer Corporation, New England Television Corporation (owner of Boston's then CBS affiliate WNEV on channel 7), and The Reliable Water Company (manufacturer of advanced sea water desalination plants).

[citation needed] Dan Miller designed and programmed the Busy Boxes implementation of Salt, with assistance from Suresh Kumar Devanathan.

Pancomputationalism is related to several larger schools of philosophy: atomism, determinism, mechanism, monism, naturalism, philosophical realism, reductionism, and scientific empiricism.

[23] In 1984, Fredkin was awarded the Carnegie Mellon University Dickson Prize in Science, given annually to the person who has been judged to have made the most progress in a scientific field in the United States during that year.