Scientific Computing Seminar

Date:

Friday, November 4, 2005

Time:

1:00pm-2:00pm

Location:

50A-5132

Seminar Speaker:

Joe Grcar
CRD, LBNL

Title:

John von Neumann's Analysis of Gaussian Elimination and the Invention of Modern Computing

Abstract:

Just when modern computers were being invented (those digital, electronic, and programmable), John von Neumann and Herman Goldstine wrote a paper to illustrate the mathematical analyses that they believed would be needed to use the new machines effectively and to guide the development of still faster computers. Their foresight and the congruence of historical events made their work the first modern paper in numerical analysis. Von Neumann once remarked that to found a mathematical theory one had to prove the first theorem, which he and Goldstine did concerning the accuracy of Gaussian elimination, but the paper was about more than that. Von Neumann and Goldstine described what they surmised would be the significant questions once computers became available for computational science, and they suggested enduring ways to answer them.

Sponsor of Seminar:

Esmond Ng

Scientific Computing

Contact Esmond G. Ng EGNg@lbl.gov