History of computer science

People have been using mechanical devices like abacus to aid calculation for thousands of years. The ancient Greeks developed some very sophisticated analog computers. John Napier (1550-1617), the Scottish inventor of logarithms, invented Napier's rods (sometimes called "Napier's bones") to simplify the task of multiplication. Work on calculating machines continued. Some special-purpose calculating machines were built like, Carissan (18801925), a lieutenant in the French infantry, designed and had built a marvelous mechanical device for factoring integers and testing them for primality. In 1936, Alan Turing (1912-1954) constructed a formal model of a computer -- the Turing machine the calculations required for ballistics during World War II spurred the development of the general-purpose electronic digital computer. At Harvard, Howard H. Aiken (1900-1973) built the Mark I electromechanical computer in 1944, with the assistance of IBM. Grace Murray Hopper (19061992) invented the notion of a compiler, in 1951. Earlier, in 1947, Hopper found the first computer "bug" John Backus and others developed the first FORTRAN compiler in April 1957. LISP, a list-processing language for artificial intelligence programming, was invented by John McCarthy in 1958. In the 1960's, computer science came into its own as a discipline. In fact, the term was coined by George Forsythe, a numerical analyst. The first computer science department was formed at Purdue University in 1962. The first person to receive a Ph. D. from a computer science department was Richard Wexelblat, at the University of Pennsylvania, in December 1965. At the end of the decade, Arpanet, a precursor to today's Internet, began to be constructed. The theory of databases saw major advances with the work of Edgar F. Codd on relational databases. This decade also saw the rise of the personal computers. Parallel computers continue to be developed.

Charles Babbage
Charles Babbage
Charles Babbage (1791-1871 was born 26 Dec 1791, the son of a London banker. In 1811, he co-founded the Analytical Society to promote continental mathematics and to reform the mathematics of Newton taught at the University at that time. He worked on the calculus of functions in his twenties. After being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1816, Babbage played a role in the development of the stronomical Society in 1820. In 1821 he invented the D ifference Engine to compile mathematical tables. The Difference Engine was completed in 1832. Then he began work on a machine that could do any type of calculation, and this machine was the Analytical Engine completed about 1856.

Charles Babbage in 1860

Born

26 December 1791 London, England

Died

18 October 1871 (aged 79) Marylebone, London, England

Nationality English

Fields

Mathematics, analytical philosophy, computer science

Known for Mathematics, computing

John von Neumann

John von Neumann in the 1940s

Born

December 28, 1903 Budapest, Austria-Hungary February 8, 1957 (aged 53) Washington, D.C., United States Mathematics and computer science Computer virus Commutation theorem Continuous geometry Game theory Lattice theory Lifting theory Merge sort Minimax theorem von Neumann architecture

Died

John von Neumann ;( December 28, 1903 February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath who made major contributions to a vast number of fields. Including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, geometry, fluid dynamics, economics, linear programming, game theory, computer science, numerical analysis, hydrodynamics, and statistics, as well as many other mathematical fields. He is generally regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians in modern history. The mathematician Jean Dieudonn called von Neumann "the last of the great mathematicians", while Peter Lax described him as possessing the most "fearsome technical prowess" and "scintillating intellect" of the century, and Hans Bethe stated "I have sometimes wondered whether a brain like von Neumann's does not indicate a species superior to that of man". Even in Budapest, in the time that produced geniuses like Theodore von Krmn (b. 1881), George de Hevesy (b. 1885), Le Szilard (b. 1898), Eugene Wigner (b. 1902), Edward Teller (b. 1908), and Paul Erds (b. 1913), his brilliance stood out. Von Neumann was a pioneer of the application of operator theory to quantum mechanics, in the development of functional analysis, a principal member of the Manhattan Project and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (as one of the few originally appointed), and a key figure in the development of game theory and the concepts of cellular automata, the universal constructor, and the digital computer. Von Neumann's mathematical analysis of the structure of self-replication preceded the discovery of the structure of DNA. In a short list of facts about his life he submitted to the National Academy of Sciences, he stated "The part of my work I consider most essential is that on quantum mechanics, which developed in Gttingen in 1926, and subsequently in Berlin in 19271929. Also, my work on various forms of operator theory, Berlin 1930 and Princeton 19351939; on the ergodic theorem, Princeton, 19311932." Along with Teller and Stanisaw Ulam, von Neumann worked out key steps in the nuclear physics involved in thermonuclear reactions and the hydrogbomb

Fields

Known for

Notable awards

Enrico Fermi Award (1956)