Founder of Wolfram Research and the Mathematica Package, author and publisher of New Kind Of Science.
Controversial within his field, stimulating both strong attacks and equally vigorous defenses. His own Web site refers to himself as "widely regarded as one of the world's most original scientists." One specific complaint is that he has attempted to claim credit for the work of others in New Kind Of Science. Another complaint is that his math has not been sufficiently peer reviewed. These complaints are explored in New Kind Of Science (the Wiki Page, not the book) and Cellular Automaton.
Early Biography excerpted from www.forbes.com 
Stephen Wolfram was born in London in 1959. His father is a moderately successful novelist; his late mother was an Oxford don in philosophy. A brilliant child, he earned a scholarship to Eton College at age 13. There, forced to play cricket, he found the best place on the field to read books. By 14, he had written his own book on particle physics; by 17, he had a scientific paper published in the journal Nuclear Physics.
He attended Oxford University on a scholarship and, during the summer after his first year, went to work in the Theoretical High-Energy Physics Groups at the Argonne National Laboratory. That summer Wolfram wrote a scientific paper on heavy quark production that soon became a classic in the field�and he turned 18.
A year later, in 1978, Wolfram was invited to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) by legendary scientist Murray Gell-Mann. There his brilliant reputation gathered momentum: He invented the Fox-Wolfram variables in particle physics, discovered the Politzer-Wolfram upper bound on the mass of quarks, and published more than 25 scientific papers. The work he did in just his first year at Caltech earned him a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. In 1980 he joined the Caltech faculty, and in 1981, at age 21, he was awarded a Mac Arthur "Genius" Fellowship�not for any single piece of work but for the "breadth of his thinking."
As Alan Kay has said, the best way to predict the future is to invent it. My explicit role at Rational is to look out to the 3 to 5 year horizon and, where I can, help invent the future of software engineering. I am not so Wolframishly vain or self-deluded as to believe that I alone hold the keys to that kingdom, but rather, I stand on the shoulders of giants and work by engaging with lots of really really smart people, people who challenge me, from whom I learn, and with whom we try to create. --Grady Booch, Xp Mailing List
See also Pattern Quasi Great Teacher. How does that apply? Special case of The Secret Of Power.
See original on c2.com