CS Colloquium
SPEAKER: Joseph Grcar,
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
TITLE:
John von Neumann and the Origins of Scientific Computing
DATE: Thursday, November 8, 2007
TIME: 10:00 A.M.
PLACE: 2405 Siebel Center
201 N. Goodwin Ave., Urbana, IL
ABSTRACT
Scientific computing as we understand it began to be practiced around
the time of Carl Friedrich Gauss in the form of astronomical
calculations based on Issac Newton's laws, and in the form of geodetic
calculations for cartography. Of course, the invention of modern
computers (those digital, electronic, and programmable) in the mid
1940s represented a paradigm shift in what could be achieved through
calculation. From his wartime military duties John von Neumann
acquired what he described as an “obscene” interest in
mechanized calculations. No one was better situated than he to
understand the advances that could be realized but also the whole range
of technical obstacles that had to be overcome. Thus von Neumann and
his principal collaborator in this work, Herman Goldstine, reinvented
scientific computing in the late 1940s. As a necessary prerequisite to
that work they also in large part invented the modern computer and
created computer science in a series of influential reports that
although unpublished were widely circulated.
This talk will survey the development of scientific computing from
Gauss to the first electronic calculations in the early 1950s. The
emphasis in not on von Neumann himself but rather on the conceptual
changes that occurred. Von Neumann arises naturally in the story
because many of those changes can be traced to him. Time permitting,
we will also sketch von Neumann's biography.