Schoonschip was one of the first computer algebra systems, developed in 1963 by Martinus J. G. Veltman, for use in particle physics.
| Developer(s) | Martinus J. G. Veltman, Netherlands |
|---|---|
| Initial release | 1967, 56–57 years ago[1] |
| Written in | Assembly language |
| Platform | Atari, Amiga, Sun 3/60, NeXT, and Macintosh computers, with 680x0 CPUs |
| Type | Computer algebra system |
"Schoonschip" refers to the Dutch expression "schoon schip maken": to make a clean sweep, to clean/clear things up (literally: to make the ship clean). The name was chosen "among others to annoy everybody, who could not speak Dutch".
Veltman initially developed the program to compute the quadrupole moment of the W boson, the computation of which involved "a monstrous expression involving in the order of 50,000 terms in intermediate stages" [2]
The initial version, dating to December 1963, ran on an IBM 7094 mainframe.[3] In 1966 it was ported to the CDC 6600 mainframe, and later to most of the rest of Control Data's CDC line.[3] In 1983 it was ported to the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, allowing its use on a number of 68000-based systems running variants of Unix.[3]
FORM can be regarded, in a sense, as the successor to Schoonschip.
Contacts with Veltman about Schoonschip have been important for Stephen Wolfram in building Mathematica.[4]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ Computer Algebra in Particle Physics Stefan Weinzierl
- ^ Nobel Lecture by Martinus J.G. Veltman held on December 8, 1999 "From Weak Interactions to Gravitation", p. 4 of the paper
- ^ a b c Martinus J. G. Veltman; David N. Williams (9 June 1993). "Schoonschip '91". arXiv:hep-ph/9306228.
- ^ Stephen Wolfram (2021). "Tini Veltman (1931–2021): From Assembly Language to a Nobel Prize." In: Stephen Wolfram Writings.
External links
editFurther reading
edit- Close, Frank (2011) The Infinity Puzzle. Oxford University Press. Describes the historical context of and rationale for 'Schoonschip' (Chapter 11: "And Now I Introduce Mr 't Hooft")
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