Timeline of modern scientific computing

The following timeline starts with the invention of the modern computer in the late interwar period. For a fuller picture of the development of scientific computing (also known as computational science), see timeline of scientific computing article.

1930s

  • John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry create the first electronic non-programmable, digital computing device, the Atanasoff–Berry Computer, from 1937-42.

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.
  • First hydro simulations occurred at Los Alamos.A Method for the Numerical Calculation of Hydrodynamic Shocks (1950).

Von Neumann, J.; Richtmyer, R. D. Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 21, p.232-237

  • George Dantzig introduces the simplex method (voted one of the top 10 algorithms of the 20th century) in 1947.
  • Ulam and von Neumann introduce the notion of cellular automata.
  • Turing formulated the LU decomposition method.

1950s

  • First successful weather predictions on a computer occurred.
  • 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. Voted one of the top 10 algorithms of the 20th century.
  • A team led by Backus develops the FORTRAN compiler and programming language at IBM's research centre in San Jose, California. This sped the adoption of scientific programming, and is one of the oldest extant programming languages, as well as one of the most popular in science and engineering.
  • "Equations of State Calculations by Fast Computing Machines" introduces the Metropolis–Hastings algorithm.
  • Fermi, Ulam and Pasta with help from Mary Tsingou, discover the Fermi–Pasta–Ulam problem.
  • Molecular dynamics invented by Bernie Alder and Wainwright
  • Householder invents his eponymous matrices and transformation method (voted one of the top 10 algorithms of the 20th century).
  • John G.F. Francis and Vera Kublanovskaya 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,RW Clough, “The Finite Element Method in Plane

Stress Analysis,” Proceedings of 2nd ASCE Conference on Electronic Computation, Pittsburgh, PA, Sept. 8, 9, 1960.

to describe the methods of Courant, Hrenikoff and Zienkiewicz, among others. See also here.

  • Edward Lorenz discovers the butterfly effect on a computer, attracting interest in chaos theory.
  • Molecular dynamics invented independently by Aneesur Rahman.
  • Fast Fourier Transform (voted one of the top 10 algorithms of the 20th cen.) invented by Cooley and Tukey.

1970s

  • Mandelbrot, from studies of the Fatou, Julia and Mandelbrot sets, coined and popularized the term 'fractal' to describe these structures' self-similarity.
  • Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken prove the four colour theorem, the first theorem to be proved by computer.Appel, K. and Haken, W. "Every Planar Map is Four-Colorable, II: Reducibility." Illinois J. Math. 21, 491-567, 1977.

1980s

  • Fast multipole method (voted one of the top 10 algorithms of the 20th cen.) invented by Rokhlin and Leslie Greengaard.

1990s

  • In computational genomics and sequence analysis, the Human Genome Project, an endeavour to sequence the entire human genome, begins in 1990.
  • Kepler conjecture is almost all but certainly proved algorithmically by Thomas Hales in 1998.

2000s (decade)

  • The Human Genome Project completes a rough draft of human genome in 2000.
  • The Human Genome Project completed in 2003.

Miscelleaneous

  • Technology and Society
    • Tim Berners-Lee created Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and the World Wide Web in 1989 and 1990 respectively, while working at CERN.
    • The world's first graphical internet browser, Mosaic released at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, in 1993.

Key organisations

By (research/non-review) publications:

  • Los Alamos (7): Ulam et al. 1947; Metropolis & Ulam 1949; Richtmyer 1948; v. Neumann & Richtmyer 1950; Metropolis et al. 1953, Fermi et al. 1955; v. Neumann 1966.
  • NIST (4): Hestenes & Stiefel 1952, Stiefel 1952, and Lanczos 1950, 1952.

By (unique) authors/innovators:

  • IBM (2): Backus et al., Mandelbrot.
  • Los Alamos (11): Fermi; Metropolis (2 pub.s); Pasta; Richtmeyer (3 pub.s); Rosenbluth, A.W.; Rosenbluth, M.N.; Teller, A.H.; Teller, E.; Tsingou; Ulam (3 pub.s); v. Neumann (4 pub.s);
  • NIST(3): Hestenes, Lanczos(2 pub.s), Stiefel(2 pub.s).

See also

  • Scientific computing
  • Timeline of computing
  • History of computing
  • Timeline of mathematics from the 20th century onwards
  • Timeline of numerical analysis after 1945
  • Timeline of scientific computing