Timeline of computational mathematics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is a timeline of key developments in computational mathematics.
1940s
- Monte Carlo simulation (voted one of the top 10 algorithms of the 20th century) invented at Los Alamos by von Neumann, Ulam and Metropolis.[1][2][3]
- Dantzig introduces the simplex algorithm (voted one of the top 10 algorithms of the 20th century).[4]
- First hydro simulations at Los Alamos occurred.[5][6]
- Ulam and von Neumann introduce the notion of cellular automata.[7]
- A routine for the Manchester Baby written to factor a large number (2^18), one of the first in computational number theory.[8] The Manchester group would make several other breakthroughs in this area.[9]
- LU decomposition technique first discovered.
1950s
- Hestenes, Stiefel, and Lanczos, all from the Institute for Numerical Analysis at the National Bureau of Standards, initiate the development of Krylov subspace iteration methods.[10][11][12][13] Voted one of the top 10 algorithms of the 20th century.
- Equations of State Calculations by Fast Computing Machines introduces the Metropolis–Hastings algorithm.[14] Also, important earlier independent work by Alder and S. Frankel.[15][16]
- Enrico Fermi, Stanislaw Ulam, John Pasta, and Mary Tsingou, discover the Fermi–Pasta–Ulam–Tsingou problem.[17]
- In network theory, Ford & Fulkerson compute a solution to the maximum flow problem.[18]
- Householder invents his eponymous matrices and transformation method (voted one of the top 10 algorithms of the 20th century).[19]
- Molecular dynamics invented by Alder and Wainwright[20]
- John G.F. Francis[21] and Vera Kublanovskaya[22] invent QR factorization (voted one of the top 10 algorithms of the 20th century).
1960s
- First recorded use of the term "finite element method" by Ray Clough,[23] to describe the methods of Courant, Hrenikoff and Zienkiewicz, among others. See also here.
- Using computational investigations of the 3-body problem, Minovitch formulates the gravity assist method.[24][25]
- Molecular dynamics was invented independently by Aneesur Rahman.[26]
- Cooley and Tukey re-invent the Fast Fourier transform (voted one of the top 10 algorithms of the 20th century), an algorithm first discovered by Gauss.
- Edward Lorenz discovers the butterfly effect on a computer, attracting interest in chaos theory.[27]
- Kruskal and Zabusky follow up the Fermi–Pasta–Ulam–Tsingou problem with further numerical experiments, and coin the term "soliton".[28][29]
- Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture formulated through investigations on a computer.[30]
- Grobner bases and Buchberger's algorithm invented for algebra[31]
- Frenchman Verlet (re)discovers a numerical integration algorithm,[32] (first used in 1791 by Delambre, by Cowell and Crommelin in 1909, and by Carl Fredrik Störmer in 1907,[33] hence the alternative names Störmer's method or the Verlet-Störmer method) for dynamics.[32]
- Risch invents algorithm for symbolic integration.[34]
1970s
- Mandelbrot, from studies of the Fatou, Julia and Mandelbrot sets, coined and popularized the term 'fractal' to describe these structures' self-similarity.[35][36]
- Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken prove the four colour theorem, the first theorem to be proved by computer.[37][38][39]
1980s
- Fast multipole method invented by Rokhlin and Greengard (voted one of the top 10 algorithms of the 20th century).[40][41][42]
1990s
- The appearance of the first research grids using volunteer computing – GIMPS (1996) and distributed.net (1997).
- Kepler conjecture is almost all but certainly proved algorithmically by Thomas Hales in 1998.
2000s
- In computational group theory, God's Number for the Rubik's cube is shown to be 20.[43][44]
- Mathematicians completely map the E8-group.[45][46][47]
2010s
See also
References
External links
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