Wolfram Computation Meets Knowledge

About Wolfram

Founded by Stephen Wolfram in 1987, Wolfram Research is one of the world's most respected computer, web and cloud software companies—as well as a powerhouse of scientific and technical innovation. As a pioneer in computation and computational knowledge, we have pursued a long-term vision to develop the science, technology and tools to make computation an ever-more-potent force in today's and tomorrow's world.


Background

Over the course of three decades, we have progressively built an unprecedented base of technology that now makes possible our broad portfolio of innovative products. At the center is the revolutionary Wolfram Language, which defines a unique convergence of computation and knowledge.

First released in 1988, Mathematica is our original, longstanding flagship product—and a major force in the technical and educational communities with millions of dedicated users around the world. Built on our global technology base, Mathematica represents a unique blend of major research breakthroughs, outstanding user-oriented design and world-class software engineering.

The rise of computation has been a major world theme for the past 50 years. Our goal is to provide the framework to let computation achieve its full potential in the decades to come: to make it possible to compute whatever can be computed, whenever and wherever it is needed, and to make accessible the full frontiers of the computational universe.

In 2009, building on what is now the Wolfram Language, we introduced Wolfram|Alpha—for the first time making large-scale computational knowledge a practical reality and introducing a host of unexpected new technology directions. Used by millions of people every day on the web, through mobile apps and intelligent assistants and in enterprise deployments, Wolfram|Alpha represents one of the most complex and ambitious software projects of all time and a major intellectual and technological achievement.

Our organization has been built to focus on long-term goals while consistently delivering the best possible products and services on an ongoing basis. Led by CEO Stephen Wolfram, we have assembled over the past three decades a team of remarkable breadth and depth, continually attracting outstanding new talent to our uniquely productive intellectual environment.

As intellectual pioneers, our organization maintains a deep commitment to communication and education. Not only are our products used at schools, colleges and universities throughout the world, but we have also developed the world's largest free network of technical and computational websites, and we are defining new curriculum directions as well as offering a variety of innovative student programs—which have served as a rich training ground for future leaders in science and technology.

Among the many advances made possible by Wolfram technologies over the past three decades is Stephen Wolfram's own groundbreaking 2002 book A New Kind of Science, which defines a sweeping new direction for computation and basic science and has had an increasingly profound effect in science, technology and the arts—as well as seeding many important Wolfram technology innovations, especially in Wolfram|Alpha.

Our strategy as an organization is to maintain a portfolio of development, from continually strengthening our core algorithms and knowledgebase, to supporting the latest computing and deployment architectures, to developing major new concepts and capabilities—and consistently delivering the results in the form of products, services and experimental initiatives that make breakthrough technology accessible to the broadest possible spectrum of people and organizations.

In our focus on long-term objectives, we have chosen to remain a closely held private group of companies, and our consistent business success has allowed us to build a strong organization capable of pursuing a broad range of research and development. With a tightly knit but geographically distributed group of over seven hundred employees, we are able to take a unified approach to a remarkable range of interdisciplinary projects, efficiently developing major innovations and quickly implementing them in our products.

Our first three decades saw a sequence of progressive achievements. Our ideas and products have spread throughout the fabric of modern science and technology and have informed a generation of technical innovation and education, and now we look forward to the increasing contributions that our unique technology base and uniquely positioned organization can make in the years and decades to come.

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Locations: Champaign, IL (worldwide headquarters); Oxfordshire, UK (European headquarters); Tokyo, Japan (Asian headquarters); Boston, MA; with additional locations worldwide.