Douglas R. Hofstadter, professor of cognitive science and computer science at Indiana University and recipient of a 1980 Pulitzer Prize for his book Gšdel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, will speak at Cornell University on Thursday, April 24, at 7:30 p.m. in Statler Auditorium. The lecture is free, but tickets are required and are available at Willard Straight Hall ticket office and the Graduate School information desk in Caldwell Hall.

The lecture is titled "The Magical Dance of Words Across the Language Gap: Musings on Translation and Creativity" and is presented as part of the Graduate School's Olin Lecture Series.

Hofstadter, who directs Indiana University's Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, first grew fascinated by language as a teen-ager in Europe, where his father, a physicist, took the family on sabbatical. Later, Hofstadter's studies at Stanford University focused on mathematics, especially logic and number theory.

After graduating from Stanford in 1965, he received master's and doctoral degrees in physics from the University of Oregon in 1972 and 1975, respectively. His dissertation, a mathematical study in solid-state physics, revealed how number theory -- specifically, continued fractions -- plays a role in that branch of physics.

Hofstadter's first book, Gšdel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (popularly known as "GEB"), incorporates many fields to show how consciousness, free will and a sense of personal identity emerge in systems that enjoy a specific type of self-reflection. Filled with fanciful analogies and wordplay to explain abstract concepts, the book won considerable recognition, including, in 1980, the Pulitzer in the general nonfiction category and a National Book Award. Hofstadter also received a Guggenheim Fellowship that year.

More recently his work has focused on mathematics, particularly geometry, and on emergent models of high-level perception and analogical thought. With graduate students he has developed several computer programs, including the Copycat and Tabletop projects, that model the interplay between conceptual networks and perceptual agents.

The Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Foundation established an endowment to fund the Olin Lecture Series at Cornell in 1986. Previous Olin Lectures have included Noam Chomsky, Isabel Allende, Stephen Jay Gould, Kurt Vonnegut, Jane Goodall and Lani Guinier.