Timeline of computational physics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The following timeline starts with the invention of the modern computer in the late interwar period.
1930s
- John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry create the first electronic non-programmable, digital computing device, the Atanasoff–Berry Computer, that lasted from 1937 to 1942.
1940s
- Nuclear bomb and ballistics simulations at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL), respectively.[Note 1]
- Monte Carlo simulation (voted one of the top 10 algorithms of the 20th century by Jack Dongarra and Francis Sullivan in the 2000 issue of Computing in Science and Engineering)[1] is invented at Los Alamos National Laboratory by John von Neumann, Stanislaw Ulam and Nicholas Metropolis.[2][3][4]
- First hydrodynamic simulations performed at Los Alamos National Laboratory.[5][6]
- Ulam and von Neumann introduce the notion of cellular automata.[7][8]
1950s
- Equations of State Calculations by Fast Computing Machines introduces the Metropolis–Hastings algorithm.[9] Also, important earlier independent work by Berni Alder and Stan Frankel.[Note 2][10][11]
- Enrico Fermi, Ulam and John Pasta with help from Mary Tsingou, discover the Fermi–Pasta–Ulam-Tsingou problem.[12]
- Research initiated into percolation theory.[13]
- Molecular dynamics is formulated by Alder and Tom E. Wainwright.[14]
1960s
- Using computational investigations of the 3-body problem, Michael Minovitch formulates the gravity assist method.[15][16]
- Glauber dynamics is invented for the Ising model by Roy J. Glauber.[17]
- Edward Lorenz discovers the butterfly effect on a computer, attracting interest in chaos theory.[18]
- Molecular dynamics is independently invented by Aneesur Rahman.[19]
- Walter Kohn instigates the development of density functional theory (with L.J. Sham and Pierre Hohenberg),[20][21] for which he shared the Nobel Chemistry Prize (1998).[22]
- Martin Kruskal and Norman Zabusky follow up the Fermi–Pasta–Ulam problem with further numerical experiments, and coin the term "soliton".[23][24]
- Kawasaki dynamics is invented for the Ising model.[25]
- Loup Verlet (re)discovers a numerical integration algorithm,[26] (first used in 1791 by Jean Baptiste Delambre, by P. H. Cowell and A. C. C. Crommelin in 1909, and by Carl Fredrik Störmer in 1907,[27] hence the alternative names Störmer's method or the Verlet-Störmer method) for dynamics, and the Verlet list.[26]
1970s
- Computer algebra replicates the work of Boris Delaunay in Lunar theory.[28][29][30][31][32]
- Martinus Veltman's calculations at CERN lead him and Gerard 't Hooft to valuable insights into renormalizability of electroweak theory.[33] The computation has been cited as a key reason for the award of the Nobel Physics Prize that has been given to both.[34]
- Jean Hardy, Yves Pomeau and Olivier de Pazzis introduce the first lattice gas model, abbreviated as the HPP model after its authors.[35][36] These later evolved into lattice Boltzmann models.
- Kenneth G. Wilson shows that continuum quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is recovered for an infinitely large lattice with its sites infinitesimally close to one another, thereby beginning lattice QCD.[37]
1980s
- Italian physicists Roberto Car and Michele Parrinello invent the Car–Parrinello method.[38]
- Swendsen–Wang algorithm is invented in the field of Monte Carlo simulations.[39]
- Fast multipole method is invented by Vladimir Rokhlin and Leslie Greengard (voted one of the top 10 algorithms of the 20th century).[40][41][42]
- Ullli Wolff invents the Wolff algorithm for statistical physics and Monte Carlo simulation.[43]
See also
Notes
- Unfortunately, Alder's thesis advisor was unimpressed, so Alder and Frankel delayed publication of their results until much later.