Illinois Genetic Algorithms Laboratory

Apparently, GAs were invented at the Santa Fe Institute, according to a blog post by Anders Bylund (here) about Comac McCarthy on Oprah:

Traditional economics mixed with chaos theory and particle physics to produce Brian Arthur's economic law of increasing returns. Evolutionary theory plus computer science spawned the discipline of evolutionary computing and genetic algorithms at the institute. And so its goes.

No, so it doesn't go.  Forerunners of modern GAs were around in the 50s, and SFI didn't have (and hasn't had) much to do with GAs at all, in fact.  But it also sounds good, and it is probably the only way to get "genetic algorithms" and Oprah mentioned in the same blog post.