History & Background
Mathematica
is the world's
most powerful global computation
system. First released in 1988, it has had a profound effect on the
way computers are used in technical and other fields. In 2007, after
many years of development, a major reinvention of Mathematica once again transformed how computation is done.
It is often said that the release of Mathematica
marked the
beginning of modern technical computing. Ever since the 1960s
individual packages had existed for specific numerical, algebraic,
graphical, and other tasks. But the visionary concept
of Mathematica was to create
once and for all a single system
that could handle all the various aspects of technical computing--and
beyond--in a coherent and unified way. The key intellectual advance
that made this possible was the invention of a new kind of symbolic
computer language that could, for the first time, manipulate the very
wide range of objects needed to achieve the generality required for
technical computing, using only a fairly small number of basic
primitives.
When Mathematica 1.0 was
released, The New York Times
wrote that "the importance of the program cannot be overlooked,"
and Business Week later ranked Mathematica
among the 10
most important new products of the year.
Mathematica
was also hailed in
the technical community as a major
intellectual and practical revolution.
 At first,
Mathematica's impact was felt
mainly in the physical sciences,
engineering, and mathematics. But over the years, Mathematica has
become
important in a remarkably wide range of fields, technical and otherwise.
Mathematica
is used today
throughout the sciences--physical,
biological,
social, and other--and counts many of the world's foremost scientists
among
its enthusiastic supporters. It has played a crucial role in many
important
discoveries and has been the basis for thousands of technical papers. In
engineering, Mathematica has
become a standard for both development
and
production, and by now many of the world's important new products rely at
one stage or another on Mathematica
in their design. In commerce,
Mathematica
has played a
significant role in the growth of
sophisticated
financial modeling, and is being widely used in many kinds of general
planning and analysis. Mathematica
has also emerged as an important
tool in
computer science and software development: its language component is
widely
used as a research, prototyping, and interface environment.
The largest part of Mathematica's
user community consists of
technical and
other professionals. But Mathematica is
also heavily used
in education, and
there are now many hundreds of courses--from high school to graduate
school--based on it. In addition, with the availability of student
versions,
Mathematica
has become a
popular and prestigious tool for students
around
the world.
The diversity of Mathematica's
user base is striking. It spans all
continents, encompasses ages from below 10 on up, and includes artists,
composers, linguists, and lawyers, as well as hobbyists from all walks of
life.
Ever since Mathematica was
first released, its user base has
steadily grown,
and by now the total number of users is in the millions.
Mathematica has
become a standard in a great many organizations, and it is used today in
all
of the Fortune 50 companies, all of the 15 major departments of the U.S.
government, and all of the world's 50 largest universities.
At a technical level, Mathematica
is widely regarded as a major
feat of
software engineering. It is one of the largest single application programs
ever developed, and it contains a vast array of new original algorithms
and
important innovations. Several paradigms pioneered in Mathematica
have
emerged as major directions in software thinking, and each successive
version of Mathematica has
invariably redefined the state of the
art in a
number of areas of computing.
The development of Mathematica
is the work of a world-class team at
Wolfram
Research led since its inception by Stephen Wolfram. The success of
Mathematica
has allowed the
company to focus on unusually long-term
goals,
and to carry out a unique program of research and development, as well as
supporting the world's intellectual community with a variety of important
freely accessible websites.
Over the years, the generality of Mathematica's
core design has
steadily
allowed it to expand its reach. From its origins as a system used
primarily
for Mathematical and technical computing, Mathematica has
gradually emerged
as a major force in many other areas of computing. And with its dramatic
breakthroughs of 2007, it now stands at the end of its first two decades
as
the defining system for the broad future of computation.
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