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    Martin Casado Seeks Books on Early Symbolic Math Reception

    Investor asks for books on how mathematicians reacted to early symbolic computation tools.

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    7 Sources, 60d ago, first seen 60d ago

    TLDR

    Martin Casado posted on X asking for books covering how the math and physics communities responded when early computers solved integrals once considered impossible analytically. Steven Sinofsky replied that reception was ecstatic, noting Macsyma’s rapid push into college curricula and muMath’s use on the first IBM PCs at Cornell in 1983 while faculty accessed Macsyma over Bitnet. Casado thanked him. Surya Ganguli added that such machines were jokingly called stochastic integrators. The thread links to papers on Macsyma’s development and the automation of mathematics.

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    7 Sources, first seen 60d ago

    Combined views

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    7 Sources, first seen 60d ago

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    7 Sources

    @martin_casadoAre there any good books describing how the math / physics community responded to early computers solving integrals that were previously considered impossible to do analytically? I feel that reception is a missing piece of my tech history knowledge.
    @stevesiThe community was ecstatic about Macsyma. There was even a huge rush to jam it into college curricula when muMath arrived on the first micros. The first computers in the classroom at Cornell was muMath on OG PCs while faculty were using Macsyma over Bitnet. It was my first IBM PC courseware freshman year (83) and there was just one PC lab on campus at all. There were a couple of MIT papers from Project MAC by Joel Moses: Symbolic Integration the Stormy Decade (1971) on the competing approach to implementation https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6.945/readings/simplification/moses-stormy.pdf Macsyma: A personal history (2010) on looking back https://pdf.sciencedirectassets.com/272313/1-s2.0-S0747717111X00123/1-s2.0-S0747717110001483/main.pdf Interestingly enough I found this 2020 article on summarizing how mathematics just rolled with symbolic calculation as a tool without conflict - “Coded Conduct: Making MACSYMA Users and the Automation of Mathematics” https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bjhs-themes/article/coded-conduct-making-macsyma-users-and-the-automation-of-mathematics/19936AF1E826C13BA410EFDB704026DF This last paper really captures how it felt to a "new to it all" me. While we were learning freshman calculus, we were sent over to a lab to see how easy our engineer lives would be using a PC.
    @SuryaGanguli@martin_casado They called them “stochastic integrators” 🤣
    @lishali88@martin_casado Didn’t Oppenheimer have some quotes about this @slaterstich
    @BlancheMinerva@martin_casado @ylecun By the mid 1900s, solving an integral was generally not considered the job of a mathematician. You may have seen different responses had a mechanical device for calculating them been invented in the 1700s.

    7 Sources

    @martin_casadoAre there any good books describing how the math / physics community responded to early computers solving integrals that were previously considered impossible to do analytically? I feel that reception is a missing piece of my tech history knowledge.
    @stevesiThe community was ecstatic about Macsyma. There was even a huge rush to jam it into college curricula when muMath arrived on the first micros. The first computers in the classroom at Cornell was muMath on OG PCs while faculty were using Macsyma over Bitnet. It was my first IBM PC courseware freshman year (83) and there was just one PC lab on campus at all. There were a couple of MIT papers from Project MAC by Joel Moses: Symbolic Integration the Stormy Decade (1971) on the competing approach to implementation https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6.945/readings/simplification/moses-stormy.pdf Macsyma: A personal history (2010) on looking back https://pdf.sciencedirectassets.com/272313/1-s2.0-S0747717111X00123/1-s2.0-S0747717110001483/main.pdf Interestingly enough I found this 2020 article on summarizing how mathematics just rolled with symbolic calculation as a tool without conflict - “Coded Conduct: Making MACSYMA Users and the Automation of Mathematics” https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bjhs-themes/article/coded-conduct-making-macsyma-users-and-the-automation-of-mathematics/19936AF1E826C13BA410EFDB704026DF This last paper really captures how it felt to a "new to it all" me. While we were learning freshman calculus, we were sent over to a lab to see how easy our engineer lives would be using a PC.
    @SuryaGanguli@martin_casado They called them “stochastic integrators” 🤣
    @lishali88@martin_casado Didn’t Oppenheimer have some quotes about this @slaterstich
    @BlancheMinerva@martin_casado @ylecun By the mid 1900s, solving an integral was generally not considered the job of a mathematician. You may have seen different responses had a mechanical device for calculating them been invented in the 1700s.