Wolfram Computation Meets Knowledge

The Mathematica Story: A Scrapbook

Three Decades of Contributions to Invention, Discovery and Education

Fred Safier, City College of San Francisco Mathematics Department

I was introduced to Mathematica in 1989 by a colleague, Ulf Wostner. He invited me to his house where he introduced me simultaneously to his brand-new Macintosh II and to Mathematica. I was bowled over. Subsequently he and I showed our other colleagues some of the capabilities appropriate to our community college mathematics teaching, and our whole department had Mathematica installed on our Mac network. In the years since then, colleagues Dennis Piontkowski and Cindy Moody have been especially creative using Mathematica in two- and three-dimensional presentations and animations. I found Mathematica indispensable in producing my Schaum’s Outline of Precalculus; without it, I don’t know how I would have drawn the figures.

I have not contributed to the development of Mathematica, but I have evangelized for it and used it in my professional life. Thank you.