Stan Ulam and computational biology

Abstract

In each the 10 years Recomb has existed as an annual conference, there has been an Ulam Lecture, beginning with the 1997 Ulam Lecture delivered in Santa Fe by Eric Lander. While intended by the conference organizers to be a less technical and more casual lecture, it is difficult for a scientist not to speak about their own science and understandably that is just what has happened. In this year's Ulam lecture I will attempt to give a sketch of the life and accomplishments of this fascinating and rather enigmatic person. At the conclusion I will try to make a few comments about the current state of computational biology. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.