# Fame.am profile — machine-readable export
# Canonical URL: https://fame.am/person/francis-heylighen
# Generated: 2026-08-14T17:44:35.858Z

schema: https://schema.org/Person
url: "https://fame.am/person/francis-heylighen"
name: "Francis Heylighen"
slug: "francis-heylighen"
description: "Francis Paul Heylighen is a Belgian cyberneticist investigating the emergence and evolution of intelligent organization. He presently works as a research professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where he directs the transdisciplinary \"Center Leo Apostel\" and the research group on \"Evolution, Complexity and Cognition\". He is best known for his work on the Principia Cybernetica Project, his model of the Internet as a global brain, and his contributions to the theories of memetics and self-organization. He is also known, albeit to a lesser extent, for his work on gifted people and their problems."
tagline: "Belgian cyberneticist"
image: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/FrancisHeylighen2009.jpg?width=1200"
gender: "male"
category:
  name: "Academics"
  slug: "academics"
profileType:
  name: "Academic"
  slug: "academic"
  entityType: "https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q39631"
birthDate: "1960-09-27"
livingStatus: "LIVING"
scores:
  popularity:           41.46
  momentum:             3.970588235294118
  historical:           4.810584
  currentAttention:     0
  sourceConfidence:     35
  profileCompleteness:  65
  trendDirection:       "STABLE"
ranks:
  global:   null
  country:  null
  category: null
platforms:
  - platform:  "WEBSITE"
    url:       "http://pcp.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html"
sources:
  - url: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Heylighen"
    title: "Francis Heylighen"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%81%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%86%D8%B3%DB%8C%D8%B3_%D9%87%DB%8C%D9%84%DB%8C%DA%AF%D9%86"
    title: "فرانسیس هیلیگن"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Heylighen"
    title: "Francis Heylighen"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Heylighen"
    title: "Francis Heylighen"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Francis_Heylighen"
    title: "Wikiquote"
    type:  "WEBSITE"
  - url: "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3081489"
    title: "Wikidata"
    type:  "WIKIDATA"

# bio (long form, separated for readability)
bio: |
  Imported from discovery source: wikidata-dump