From Mars to Minerva: The Origins of Scientific Computing in the AEC Labs

OCT 01, 1996

Although the AEC laboratories are renowned for the development of nuclear weapons, their largess in promoting scientific computing also had a profound effect on scientific and technological development in the second half of the 20th century.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881599

Robert W. Seidel

In the 50 years since the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was publicly announced at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, computers have transformed the natural sciences and even become the subject of their own science. Designed to be a tool of Mars rather than Minerva, the ENIAC was finished too late to be of use for its intended purpose of calculating ballistic tables in World War II. It was initially applied instead to the “Los Alamos problem,” a calculation of the behavior of Edward Teller’s thermonuclear weapon design, known as the “Super.” However, after the formation of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1946. Los Alamos and the other AEC laboratories actively developed computers and applied them to a wide variety of physical problems in a fruitful partnership with industry and academia.

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More about the authors

Robert W. Seidel, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota.