Ştefan Odobleja (1902 - 1978) was a Romanian scientist considered to be one of the precursors of cybernetics. His major work, "Psychologie consonantiste", first published in 1938 and 1939, in Paris, had established many of the major themes of cybernetics regarding cybernetics and systems thinking ten years before the "ground breaking" work of Norbert Wiener was published (1948).
Ştefan Odobleja was born into a family of peasants in Romania in 1902, in Izvorul Aneştilor, Mehedinţi County, Romania. He attended the Faculty of Medicine in Bucharest and became a doctor, practising as a military doctor in many cities of Romania, among which could be mentioned: Bucharest, Dej, Drobeta Turnu-Severin, Lugoj and Târgovişte . Despite a poverty stricken and, in some ways, a difficult life, he managed to remain productive. His completed works run to over 50,000 pages.
The most important of these writings is "Psychologie consonantiste" (in Romanian, "Psihologia consonantistă"). This book, published in Paris (vol. I in 1938 and vol. II in 1939), ran to nearly 900 pages and included 300 figures in the text. The author wrote at the time that "this book is... a table of contents, an index or a dictionary of psychology, [for] a ... great Treatise of Psychology that should contain 20-30 volumes". In this work, Ştefan Odobleja had laid the theoretical foundations of what became known later as cybernetics. However, partly due to the beginning of World War II, almost immediately after its publication the book was generally ignored. The first Romanian edition of this groundbreaking work did not appear until 1982 (the first edition was published in French).
Since then, however, mainly due to Odobleja's influence, cybernetics has become increasingly important in Romania. One of the largest Romanian state universities, Academia de Studii Economice Bucureşti, has a Cybernetics department. In 1982 a group of scientists have established The Cybernetics Academy, a scientific forum registered in Lugano, Switzerland, that is financed by the Romanian billionaire Prof. Dr. Iosif Constantin Drǎgan.
As a an apreciation for his entire work of mapping the unknown territory of the consonantist psychology, cybernetics and generalized cybernetics, Ştefan Odobleja was elected posthumously member of honour of The Romanian Academy, the supreme artistic, cultural, literar and scientific forum of Romania.