Cleve Moler, the mathematician whose development of the MATLAB high-level programming environment changed the face of numerical computation and has provided an indispensable tool for engineers worldwide, is being honored by IEEE with the 2014 IEEE John von Neumann Medal. IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional association.
The medal, sponsored by IBM Corporation, recognizes Moler for fundamental and widely used contributions to numerical linear algebra and scientific and engineering software that transformed computational science. The medal will be presented on 23 August 2014 at the IEEE Honors Ceremony in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Moler developed MATLAB, which stands for “matrix laboratory,” as a simple matrix calculator for student use in mathematical courses, but it soon found broader acceptance. MATLAB makes computing easier for scientists and engineers and increases productivity by allowing them to focus on solving problems without needing to write their own code to perform matrix computations.
In 1984, Moler founded MathWorks with Jack Little to commercialize MATLAB. Today, MATLAB has over one million users representing universities, industry and government worldwide. It is an important tool in industries including automotive, aerospace, communications, electronics, industrial automation, financial services and computational biology.
During the 1970s, Moler helped develop the LINPACK and EISPACK linear algebra software libraries, giving scientists the ability to solve problems without requiring them to be experts in the algorithms and software. The LINPACK Benchmark, used to rank the world’s fastest supercomputers, is named after the LINPACK software library.
