SS7 - History of Computer Algebra
link to the session's webpage
The ACA conference is now 30 years old. The discipline of computer algebra (and symbolic computation) is considerably older: its roots are really lost to history, if we include the Antikythera Mechanism. That amazing instrument, surely the oldest analogue computer known, was found in 1901 not so very far from the location of this conference. This broad session is not so ambitious as to want to trace all the prehistory of computer algebra, but we do want to capture as much of that history as resides in living memory and in publications since the advent of digital computers. This session could include discussion of the history of the following topics:
- The development of programming languages for computer algebra, e.g. CAMAL and FORMAC
- Applications of computer algebra and symbolic computation, e.g. celestial mechanics and perturbation methods
- Algebraic algorithms such as the Buchberger algorithm
- Foundational algorithms (e.g. Berlekamp’s algorithm, or modular methods)
- We informally refer to these topics as being of the heritage of Turing, of Laplace, of Hilbert, and of Tarski.
We define computer algebra and symbolic computation quite broadly and more by exam- ple than by precept: we take, for instance, anything that is the subject of an ISSAC paper or a SIGSAM Bulletin/Communications on Computer Algebra paper or a Journal of Symbolic Computation paper to be “fair game.” This is already extremely broad. Finally, although numerals are also symbols, we exclude the history of numerical methods from discussion except insofar as it pertains to exact computation.
There is a recent thorough history of numerical linear algebra by Brezinski, Meurant, and Redivo-Zaglia available from SIAM Books. We hope by this session to spark discussion that leads to a similar volume but for computer algebra and symbolic computation. We hope that each of the speakers at the session at ACA goes on to write a chapter of that future book.
Session organizers
| Robert M. Corless (University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada) |
| William J. Turkel (University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada) |
| Arthur Norman (Cambridge University, UK) |