> I would not call him a crank
> And he writes about his work and himself in grandiose ways, usually comparing himself to Newton and Einstein ... Nothing major has come out of his research
okay
> And he writes about his work and himself in grandiose ways, usually comparing himself to Newton and Einstein ... Nothing major has come out of his research
okay
Wolfram does display a similar ego to cranks. He tends to place his cellular automata at the same tier of importance as general relativity or wave-particle duality. But unlike cranks, he doesn't say that Einstein, Feynman and other greats are wrong, he doesn't "prove" his theories by math-looking babble that is definitely not math. He loves cellular automata and so much of what he writes is more like philosophy of science than science. He will model certain processes as an automaton and then he jumps from that to every natural process being a cellular automaton.
Eccentric, definitely, and most of his physics research isn't accepted but he's several orders above the level of crank.
Except stealing credit for work done by his employees. Read about his lawsuit against Matthew Cook.