Much like genetic algorithms and the whole field of evolutionary computation, evolution strategies are based on the biological process of evolution to find an optimal solution to a complex problem. Evolution strategies were invented in 1963 when two students at the Technical University of Berlin collaborated on an optimization experiment at the Institute of Flow Engineering. During wind tunnel testing they wanted to find the optimal shape of bodies in a flow, which was then a matter of laborious intuitive experimentation. One of the students, Ingo Rechenberg, hit upon the idea of following the example of biological mutation by trying random changes in the parameters defining the shape. The second student, Hans-Paul Schwefel, set about testing the efficiency of the new method with the help of a supercomputer, for there were plenty of objections to these "random strategies." From these early experiments the idea of evolution strategies was born.