Albert Müller, a dear Austrian colleague, co-founder and president of the Heinz von Foerster Society in Vienna, passed away unexpectly on August 6 after a short illness. Throughout his life, he was dedicated to the safekeeping and to passing on the legacy of the systems sciences.
As co-editor of the Austrian Journal of History and Studies of Historical Social Science, he put together the articles for An Unfinished Revolution?: Heinz von Foerster and The Biological Computer Laboratory/ BCL 1958-1976. He also contributed to The Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has no Name: Seven Days with Second Order Cybernetics. This book is considered to mark the origins of cybernetics through conversations in Von Foerster’s house in Pescadero, CA. Müller worked passionately as a Board member of the »Austrian Society for Contemporary History«. He collected not only von Foerster’s Papers, he also gathered the papers of many contemporary cyberneticians, organized them and made them available.
Through the International Federation for Systems Research and later the American Society for Cybernetics we had the honor to work with Albert Müller, a silent but sound thinker, often critique, but always open minded.