George Forsythe
Encyclopedia
George Elmer Forsythe was the founder and head of Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

's Computer Science Department. He served as professor and chairman of the department from 1965 until his death. Forsythe served as the president of the Association for Computing Machinery
Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...

 (ACM), and also co-authored four books on computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

 and a fifth on meteorology
Meteorology
Meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere. Studies in the field stretch back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the 18th century. The 19th century saw breakthroughs occur after observing networks developed across several countries...

, and edited more than 75 other books on computer science.

According to Donald Knuth
Donald Knuth
Donald Ervin Knuth is a computer scientist and Professor Emeritus at Stanford University.He is the author of the seminal multi-volume work The Art of Computer Programming. Knuth has been called the "father" of the analysis of algorithms...

, Forsythe's greatest contributions were helping to establish computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

 as its own academic discipline and starting the field of refereeing and editing algorithm
Algorithm
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning...

s as scholarly work.

Books by Forsythe

  • Dynamic Meteorology (with William Gustin and Jörgen Holmboy), John Wiley
    John Wiley
    John Wiley may refer to:*John Wiley & Sons, publishing company*John Cooper Wiley, US foreign service officer and ambassador*John D. Wiley, former Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison*John M. Wiley , U.S...

    , New York, 1945, 375pp.
  • Bibliography of Russian Mathematics Books, Chelsea, New York, 1956, 106 pp.
  • Finite Difference Methods for Partial Differential Equations (with Wolfgang Wasow), John Wiley, New York, 1966, 444pp.
  • Computer Solution of Linear Algebraic Systems (with Cleve B. Moler), Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1967, 153 pp.
  • Computer methods for mathematical computations (with Michael A. Malcolm and Cleve B. Moler), Prentice-Hall Series in Automatic Computation, Prentice-Hall., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1977. ISBN 0131653326 This book about numerical methods was partly finished when Forsythe died.


Knuth's 1972 CACM article lists all of Forsythe's published works.

External links

  • List of publications from the DBLP Bibliography Server
  • Oral history interview with Alexandra Forsythe, Charles Babbage Institute
    Charles Babbage Institute
    The Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....

    , University of Minnesota. Forsythe discusses the career of her husband, George Forsythe, and his founding and early years of the Stanford Computer Science Department.
  • Oral history interview with Albert H. Bowker, . Bowker discusses his role in the formation of the Stanford University computer science department, his hiring of George Forsythe in 1959, and the creation of a Division of Computer Science in 1963
  • Oral history interview with John Herriot, Charles Babbage Institute
    Charles Babbage Institute
    The Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....

    , University of Minnesota. Discusses the formation and development of the Stanford Computer Science Department, centering on the role of George Forsythe.
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