Science / Medicine : New Computer Program Puts Higher Math Within Reach of Everyone
The word “computer” is something of a misnomer. Up till now, computers have not done very much computation.
But last week, Stephen Wolfram, physicist extraordinaire and sometime enfant terrible, unveiled a new mathematics program that gives desk-top computers the power to do arithmetic, algebra, calculus, symbol manipulation and graphics--greater capability than they have ever had before. And it is lightning fast.
The program is called Mathematica, and it allows the computer to do computational, or applied, mathematics with the same ease that the hand-held calculator does arithmetic. It is “a general system that will do the mathematical calculations that everybody who does mathematics wants to do,” Wolfram said. Intended users include scientists, engineers, business analysts and students.
If anybody knows what these people need, Wolfram should. He received a Ph.D. in physics from Caltech eight years ago at age 20, was awarded a MacArthur “genius” fellowship the following year, joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., after a dispute with Caltech over the ownership of another computer program he had written, and then went to the University of Illinois two years ago when they gave him his own institute to run.
Last year, Wolfram formed Wolfram Research Inc. in Champaign, Ill., to develop and market Mathematica. One version of the program is already available from Wolfram Research for the Apple Macintosh computer for around $500.
IBM will have a version available for its new RT personal computer but not for its older computers and their clones, which use the MS-DOS operating system. “The MS-DOS computers are a year or two too early to run it,” Wolfram says. “The possibility of making a program like this has been afforded by the fact that there are now computers that are powerful enough to run it.”
At a press briefing for Mathematica last week, Steven Jobs, the founder of Apple and now president of Next Inc., said Mathematica eventually would be included with all Next machines that his company sells.
“This is as fundamental a piece of software as the operating system itself,” Jobs said. So far, however, there is no Next computer available. Jobs has missed several deadlines this year for bringing out his new machine.
Jobs said that increasing numbers of computer users in science and business needed computational power beyond the level of a spreadsheet. “We’re finding very sophisticated mathematics are necessary even out in the commercial environment,” he said.
“As we move into application areas that need robust mathematics, most of us get lost. We are not mathematicians. The thing that I love about Mathematica is what I can do with it without having to know much about mathematics.”
Among the users who testified to the value of Mathematica was Steve Christensen, a theoretical physicist at the University of Illinois who works in quantum gravity theory and unified field theories.
He said that complicated calculations “involving hundreds, thousands, sometimes even millions of terms,” which had previously taken months, could be made in seconds with Mathematica. “This kind of calculation will allow us to push ahead into areas of gravity theory that would have been absolutely impossible” because of the computational limits, he said.
It remains to be seen whether Mathematica will achieve the wide acceptance and commercial success that its creators and supporters envision. It is not the first mathematics program, though it goes beyond what has previously been available in first and second generation programs such as Macsyma, Maple, Reduce, SMP and several others, none of which has taken the world by storm.
Mathematica is a third-generation math program, packing more power into less space than the others. It is also a programming language, giving people interactive ability with their calculations. Users can stop in the middle of a problem and change things around. They can try out new ideas.
