W. Ross Ashby
Born	(1903-09-06)6 September 1903 London, England
Died	15 November 1972(1972-11-15) (aged 69)
Fields	Psychiatry, Cybernetics, Systems theory
Known for	Cybernetics, Law of Requisite Variety, Principle of Self-Organization
Influenced	Norbert Wiener, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Herbert A. Simon, Stafford Beer and Stuart Kauffman

W. Ross Ashby (London, 6 September 1903 – 15 November 1972) was an English psychiatrist and a pioneer in cybernetics, the study of complex systems. His first name was not used: he was known as Ross Ashby.

His two books, Design for a brain and An introduction to cybernetics, were landmark works. They introduced exact and logical thinking to the nascent discipline, and were highly influential.

Biography[link]

William Ross Ashby was born in 1903 in London, where his father was working at an advertising agency.^[1] From 1917 to 1921 William studied at the Edinburgh Academy in Scotland, and from 1921 at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he received his B.A. in 1924 and his M.B. and B.Ch. in 1928. From 1924 to 1928 he worked at the St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. Later on he also received a Diploma in Psychological Medicine in 1931, and an M.A. 1930 and M.D. from Cambridge in 1935.

Ross Ashby started working in 1930 as a Clinical Psychiatrist in the London County Council. From 1936 until 1947 he was a Research Pathologist in the St Andrew's Hospital in Northampton in England. From 1945 to 1947 he served in India where he was a Major in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

When he returned to England he served as Director of Research of the Barnwood House Hospital in Gloucester from 1947 until 1959. For a year he was Director of the Burden Neurological Institute in Bristol. In 1960 he went to the United States and became Professor, Depts. of Biophysics and Electrical Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, until his retirement in 1970.^[2]

Ashby was president of the Society for General Systems Research from 1962 to 1964. He became a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatry in 1971.

On March 4–6, 2004, a W. Ross Ashby centenary conference was held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth. Presenters at the conference included Stuart Kauffman, Stephen Wolfram and George Klir.^[3] In February 2009 a special issue of the International Journal of General Systems was specifically devoted to Ashby and his work, containing papers from leading scholars such as Klaus Krippendorff, Stuart Umpleby and Kevin Warwick.^[4]

Work[link]

Despite being widely influential within cybernetics, systems theory and, more recently, complex systems, he is not as well known as many of the notable scientists his work influenced including Herbert A. Simon, Norbert Wiener, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Stafford Beer and Stuart Kauffman.^[5]

Journal[link]

Ashby kept a journal for over 44 years in which he recorded his ideas about new theories. He started May 1928, when he was medical student at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. Over the years he wrote down a series of 25 volumes totaling 7,400 pages. In 2003 these journals were given to The British Library, London, and since 2008, they were made available online as The W. Ross Ashby Digital Archive.^[6]

Cybernetics[link]

Ross Ashby was one of the original members of the Ratio Club, a small informal dining club of young psychologists, physiologists, mathematicians and engineers who met to discuss issues in cybernetics. The club was founded in 1949 by the neurologist John Bates and continued to meet until 1958.

Earlier, in 1946, Alan Turing wrote a letter^[7] to Ashby suggesting he use Turing's Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) for his experiments instead of building a special machine. In 1948 Ashby made the Homeostat.^[8]

Variety[link]

In An Introduction to Cybernetics Ashby formulated his Law of Requisite Variety ^[9] stating that "variety absorbs variety, defines the minimum number of states necessary for a controller to control a system of a given number of states." This law can be applied for example to the number of bits necessary in a digital computer to produce a required description or model.

In response Conant (1970) produced his so called "Good Regulator theorem" stating that "every Good Regulator of a System Must be a Model of that System".^[10]

Stafford Beer applied Variety to found management cybernetics and the Viable System Model. Working independently Gregory Chaitin followed this with algorithmic information theory.

See also[link]

Systems science portal

• Cybernetics
• Homeostat
• Intelligence amplification
• Self-organization
• Systems theory

Publications[link]

Books

• 1952. Design for a Brain, Chapman & Hall.
• 1956. An Introduction to Cybernetics, Chapman & Hall.
• 1981. Conant, Roger C. (ed.). Mechanisms of Intelligence: Ross Ashby's Writings on Cybernetics, Intersystems Publishers.

Articles, a selection

• 1940. "Adaptiveness and equilibrium". In: J. Ment. Sci. 86, 478.
• 1945. "Effects of control on stability". In: Nature, London, 155, 242-243.
• 1946. "The behavioural properties of systems in equilibrium". In: Amer. J. Psychol. 59, 682-686.
• 1947. "Principles of the Self-Organizing Dynamic System". In: Journal of General Psychology (1947). volume 37, pages 125–128.
• 1948. "The homeostat". In: Electron, 20, 380.
• 1962. "Principles of the Self-Organizing System". In: Heinz Von Foerster and George W. Zopf, Jr. (eds.), Principles of Self-Organization (Sponsored by Information Systems Branch, U.S. Office of Naval Research). Republished as a PDF in Emergence: Complexity and Organization (E:CO) Special Double Issue Vol. 6, Nos. 1-2 2004, pp. 102–126.

About W. Ross Ashby

• Asaro, Peter (2008). "From Mechanisms of Adaptation to Intelligence Amplifiers: The Philosophy of W. Ross Ashby," in Michael Wheeler, Philip Husbands and Owen Holland (eds.) The Mechanical Mind in History, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

References[link]

External links[link]

• The W. Ross Ashby Digital Archive includes an extensive biography, bibliography, letters, photographs, movies, and fully indexed images of all 7,400 pages of Ashby's 25 volume journal.
• Homepage of William Ross Ashby with a short text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Yearbook 1973, and some links.
• Asaro, Peter M. (2008). "From Mechanisms of Adaptation to Intelligence Amplifiers: The Philosophy of W. Ross Ashby," in Michael Wheeler, Philip Husbands and Owen Holland (eds.) The Mechanical Mind in History, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 149–184.
• W. Ross Ashby web page by Cosma Shalizi, 1999.
• W. Ross Ashby (1956): An Introduction to Cybernetics, (Chapman & Hall, London): available electronically, Principia Cybernetica Web, 1999
• The Law of Requisite Variety in the Principia Cybernetica Web, 2001.
• 159 Aphorisms from Ashby and further links at the Cybernetics Society
• W. Ross Ashby, Cybernetics and Requisite Variety (1956) from An Introduction to Cybernetics
• W. Ross Ashby, Feedback, Adaptation and Stability (1960) from Design for a Brain
• What is Cybernetics? Livas short introductory videos on YouTube

William Ross may refer to:

Politicians[link]

• William Ross, Baron Ross of Marnock (1911–1988), Secretary of State for Scotland in the 1960s
• William Ross (Canadian politician) (1824–1912), merchant, ship builder and politician in Nova Scotia, Canada
• William Cecil Ross (1911–1998), leader of the (communist) Labour Progressive Party of Manitoba in 1945
• William Gladstone Ross (1889–1948), lawyer, judge and politician in Saskatchewan, Canada
• William Ross (Unionist politician) (born 1936), Ulster Unionist Party member of Parliament until 2001
• William Ross (speaker), New York politician, Speaker of the State Assembly 1814
• William Ross (Ontario politician) (1854–1937), merchant and politician in Ontario, Canada
• William B. Ross (1873–1924), Governor of Wyoming
• William Benjamin Ross (1855–1929), Canadian politician, lawyer and businessman
• William Cecil Ross (1911–1998), politician in Manitoba, Canada, and the leader of that province's Communist Party
• William Donald Ross (1869–1947), financier, banker and Lieutenant Governor of Ontario
• William H. H. Ross (1814–1887), American politician and former governor of Delaware
• William Roderick Ross (1869–1928), lawyer and politician in British Columbia, Canada

Other people[link]

• William Ross (composer) (born 1948), soundtrack composer
• William Ross (rower) (born 1900), Canadian Olympic rower
• William Ross (Star Trek), a fictional character in Star Trek
• William Ross (theatrical producer) (1915–1994), State Managers Association, Actors' Equity Association
• William Ross (water polo) (born 1928), US water polo player who competed in the 1956 Summer Olympics
• William Alexander Ross (1913–1942), Scottish rugby player
• William Charles Ross (1794–1860), British artist
• William David Ross (1877–1971), British philosopher
• William P. Ross (1820–1891), Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation
• William I of Ross, anglicized form of Uilleam I, Earl of Ross
• William II of Ross, anglicized form of Uilleam II, Earl of Ross
• William Ross, 8th Lord Ross (died 1640), Scottish nobleman
• William Ross, 10th Lord Ross (died 1656), Scottish nobleman
• William Ross, 12th Lord Ross (died 1738), Scottish nobleman, soldier and politician
• William Ross, 14th Lord Ross (died 1754), Scottish nobleman
• William Henry Ross, provincial level politician from Alberta, Canada

See also[link]

• Willie Ross (disambiguation)

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Simon Bates (born 17 December 1947, Birmingham) is a UK disc jockey and radio presenter. Between 1976 and 1993 he worked at BBC Radio 1, presenting the station's weekday mid-morning show for most of this period. He later became a regular presenter on Classic FM. In January 2011, he took over as host of "The Breakfast Show" on Smooth Radio.

Early career[link]

Bates was raised in Suffolk and Shropshire and was educated at Adams' Grammar School before working for radio stations in New Zealand and Australia while still a teenager. Bates returned to the UK in 1971 to join the BBC, initially working for BBC Radio 4 and then joining BBC Radio 2 in 1973 presenting the Late Night show, before presenting the Early Morning show in 1975. Bates left BBC Radio 2 in January 1976 and joined BBC Radio 1 in May the same year standing in for Tom Browne to host the Sunday Top 20 show before presenting the Sunday morning show two months later.

BBC Radio 1[link]

This article may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (September 2010)

Initially a weekend presenter playing new pop records, Bates took over the weekday mid-morning programme in November 1977 and remained the presenter for 16 years. The least flashy and garrulous of Radio 1's principal broadcasters, with an avuncular appearance (sober clothes, large glasses), Bates nevertheless became popular, attracting up to 11 million listeners. His voice — essentially a sped-up, slightly Americanised version of the standard Received Pronunciation associated with BBC Radio 4 — was unusual in that most Radio 1 DJs of the time had a more informal 'DJ' voice.

Two long-running features of his programme were particularly well known: "The Golden Hour" and "Our Tune". Bates inherited "The Golden Hour" from his predecessor, Tony Blackburn. The listener had to guess the year from records played and clues given by Bates.

However, the "Our Tune" feature, which ran from 1980, became a daily 11am fixture of his Radio 1 show, and is the element for which it is best remembered. Over the background of Nino Rota's theme to Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 film Romeo and Juliet, Bates would read a story sent by a listener. The story invariably had a theme of tragedy, often starting with a happy courtship but followed by a disaster such as illness or death. The story would conclude with a record chosen by the correspondent. Although some bemoaned the feature's mawkish nature, a number of spin-off albums, featuring songs chosen by listeners, were released.

A third, less well-remembered feature was "The Birthday File", in which Bates would play music by stars celebrating a birthday.

Bates afforded regular airtime to Jonathan King to comment about the music scene, and was always the presenter sent by Radio 1 to interview stars at the BRIT Awards. In 1989 he did a summer series called "Round The World" in which his show broadcast from a new country each day — the idea being that he would go round the world without flying within 67 days, an aim in which he was ultimately unsuccessful (he had to fly over Saudi Arabia) although he did raise £300,000 for Oxfam and it did only take 78 days. This won him awards, though cynics claimed he did it to avoid being given one of the BBC Radio 1 roadshows, and Bates himself has since effectively confirmed that suggestion. Bates' daily reports ran for only half an hour — Mike Read stepped in to present The Golden Hour during this period while the rest of the morning was taken up by the roadshow.

Bates also had two runs presenting the Sunday afternoon Top 40, from 2 April 1978 to 26 August 1979 (during which time the Top 20 was extended to the Top 40 on 12 November 1978) and 8 January 1984 to 23 September 1984. He presented BBC TVs Top of the Pops regularly from 1980 to 1988, and presented the roadshow — which he came to despise — every summer for many years until 1988, on one occasion insisting on wearing long trousers when it was compulsory to wear shorts. After his round-the-world trip in 1989, he was exempted roadshow duties during his last four summers at the station.

Bates worked on the mid-morning slot until 1993, seeing breakfast-show presenters like Noel Edmonds, Dave Lee Travis, Mike Read, Mike Smith and Simon Mayo come and go. He was not the most popular member of staff at Radio 1. John Peel was fond of repeating that he formed a posse with David Jensen and Paul Burnett to attack him in the car park but admitted they never actually confronted him.

When new controller Matthew Bannister arrived at the station intending to shake-up its safe feel and modernise it, Bates was one of the presenters thought to be under threat. Bannister's comments in the book The Nation's Favourite indicate that he feared Bates's supposed subversive influence rather than his broadcasting style. Bates resigned before the station was able to sack him, playing Life Is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me) by Reunion as his last record on his last show on the station in summer 1993.

Bates was heard on all five national BBC stations — apart from his stint at BBC Radio 1 and his broadcasts for BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 4 (unusually before he joined the pop network), he also presented a Prom concert on BBC Radio 3 in 1987 and presented a digest of the daily papers on the original version of BBC Radio 5 (now BBC Radio Five Live) in 1990.

After Radio 1[link]

After leaving Radio 1 he worked for Irish-based long wave station Atlantic 252, reviving "Our Tune" and then presented a TV version of the feature daily for BBC1's Good Morning with Anne and Nick in 1994-95 and later for Sky One.

During these few years he also became the face of the VSC often seen before films that had come out on rental video, describing the classification of the movie. This was lampooned by comedians such as Harry Enfield and Ben Elton.

From September 1995 - April 1996, Bates broadcast for Talk Radio UK (now TalkSport) as the breakfast show presenter. He was then heard on London's Liberty Radio as mid-morning presenter until 1997.

In 1997, Bates joined Classic FM, presenting the weekly Classic Romance programme and was also heard on BBC Southern Counties Radio presenting a Sunday morning show until late 1998. In addition, between 1996 and 1998, Bates presented a show on the Classic Gold Network on weekday evenings. He then moved to London's LBC as breakfast host from 1999–2002.

Classic FM[link]

Bates originally appeared on Classic FM in 1997, presenting the weekly Classic Romance show. In mid-2002 he was offered his first daily slot, presenting the drivetime show. From June 2003 he hosted the Classic FM weekday breakfast show and the one-hour "Classic FM at the Movies" programme, discussing films and film music on Sunday evening. In September 2006, his programme's hours changed from 7-11am to 8am-noon. In 2010 Bates was moved to mid morning (9am to 1pm) and shortly afterwards it was announced he would be leaving the station in January 2011 to present a show on Smooth Radio.^[1]

Gold[link]

As well as his daily show for Classic FM, Bates can also be heard on Gold (radio) Radio Network every Sunday morning from 8am-noon.

Smooth Radio[link]

On 17 August 2010, it was announced that from January 2011 Simon Bates would take over as host of the Breakfast Show on Smooth Radio, leaving Classic FM after 13 years.^[1] Bates' show replaced local programming on a number of regional radio stations, and began on 4 January 2011.^[2] He has brought back both The Golden Hour and Our Tune to the show.^[3] The Golden Hour airs every day from 9-10am as it did originally, while Our Tune airs each morning at 8:40. Other features in the show include the Thousand Pound Minute, where listeners must answer ten questions correctly within 60 seconds to win £1,000.

A Revival[link]

In addition to Classic FM shows, Bates presents a revival of his classic feature from Radio 1 "Our Tune". "Our Tune at Noon" can be heard every Monday–Friday at 12.00 Midday, syndicated on commercial stations across the UK.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Simon Bates on Smooth Radio
• Radio Rewind biography
• Aircheck Tracker biography