1.5 The History of Computational Science

Two women wiring the right side of the ENIAC with a new program, in the "pre- von Neumann" days. "U.S. Army Photo" from the archives of the ARL Technical Library. Standing: Ester Gerston Crouching: Gloria Gorden circa 1945

Since ancient times there has been a search for algorithms and devices to solve scientific problems. The field of computational science, however, had its beginnings in the early 1940s. With the development of the computer in the midst of World War II, researchers experimented with various problems and methods that could use the advancing computer technology. Numerical tools had existed for centuries, but they were used by hand and therefor slow. The computer motivated mathematicians to reexamine some of the older methods and to develop new ones.

The increasing speed of computers and advances in numerical methods have made it possible to solve most small problems rapidly, using readily available software. Hence the attention of many computational scientists has turned to the solution of problems so large that they require inordinate amounts of computer time. This need for vast amounts of computer resources has motivated the development over the last 15 years or so of new national partnerships for computing, described in the next section.

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