Book Description

Essays about pioneers in the field of scientific and numeric computing--John von Neumann, James Wilkinson, George Forsythe, and Howard Aiken--show how the drive to solve particular problems influenced the development of algorithms, software, and even computers. Methods that have led to new tools in computer analysis, such as the fast Fourier transform and finite-element and iterative methods, also are discussed, as well as the contributions of scientific organizations like ACM and SIAM and institutions like the Los Alamos Laboratory and the former National Bureau of Standards. The volume concludes with a view of numerical analysis in Europe and the Soviet Union. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR