Timeline of computational physics
The following timeline starts with the invention of the modern computer in the late interwar period.
1930s
- John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry create the first electronic non-programmable, digital computing device, the Atanasoff–Berry Computer, that lasted from 1937 to 1942.
1940s
- Nuclear bomb and ballistics simulations at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Ballistic Research Laboratory, respectively.
- Monte Carlo simulation is invented at Los Alamos National Laboratory by John von Neumann, Stanislaw Ulam and Nicholas Metropolis.
- First hydrodynamic simulations performed at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
- Ulam and von Neumann introduce the notion of cellular automata.
1950s
Equations of State Calculations by Fast Computing Machines introduces the Metropolis–Hastings algorithm. Also, important earlier independent work by Berni Alder and Stan Frankel.- Enrico Fermi, Ulam and John Pasta with help from Mary Tsingou, discover the Fermi–Pasta–Ulam-Tsingou problem.
- Research initiated into percolation theory.
- Molecular dynamics is formulated by Alder and Tom E. Wainwright.
1960s
- Using computational investigations of the 3-body problem, Michael Minovitch formulates the gravity assist method.
- Glauber dynamics is invented for the Ising model by Roy J. Glauber.
- Edward Lorenz discovers the butterfly effect on a computer, attracting interest in chaos theory.
- Molecular dynamics is independently invented by Aneesur Rahman.
- Walter Kohn instigates the development of density functional theory, for which he shared the Nobel Chemistry Prize.
- Martin Kruskal and Norman Zabusky follow up the Fermi–Pasta–Ulam problem with further numerical experiments, and coin the term "soliton".
- Kawasaki dynamics is invented for the Ising model.
- Loup Verlet discovers a numerical integration algorithm, for dynamics, and the Verlet list.
1970s
- Computer algebra replicates the work of Boris Delaunay in Lunar theory.
- Martinus Veltman's calculations at CERN lead him and Gerard 't Hooft to valuable insights into renormalizability of electroweak theory. The computation has been cited as a key reason for the award of the Nobel Physics Prize that has been given to both.
- Jean Hardy, Yves Pomeau and Olivier de Pazzis introduce the first lattice gas model, abbreviated as the HPP model after its authors. These later evolved into lattice Boltzmann models.
- Kenneth G. Wilson shows that continuum quantum chromodynamics is recovered for an infinitely large lattice with its sites infinitesimally close to one another, thereby beginning lattice QCD.
1980s
- Italian physicists Roberto Car and Michele Parrinello invent the Car–Parrinello method.
- Swendsen–Wang algorithm is invented in the field of Monte Carlo simulations.
- Fast multipole method is invented by Vladimir Rokhlin and Leslie Greengard.
- Ullli Wolff invents the Wolff algorithm for statistical physics and Monte Carlo simulation.