Dictionary.net

(ES) A kind of evolutionary algorithm where individuals(potential solutions) are encoded by a set of real-valued"object variables" (the individual's "genome"). For eachobject variable an individual also has a "strategy variable"which determines the degree of mutation to be applied to thecorresponding object variable. The strategy variables alsomutate, allowing the rate of mutation of the object variablesto vary.An ES is characterised by the population size, thenumber of offspring produced in each generation and whetherthe new population is selected from parents and offspring oronly from the offspring.ES were invented in 1963 by Ingo Rechenberg, Hans-PaulSchwefel at the Technical University of Berlin (TUB) whilesearching for the optimal shapes of bodies in a flow.