Courant’s 1928 PDE methods foreshadowed electronic numerical computing
ylecun · x · 2026-08-04
Richard Courant proposed numerical methods for solving PDEs in 1928, and John von Neumann later showed how electronic computers could implement them in 1940. The thread traces how these ideas became the ancestors of finite element methods and how NYU’s Courant Institute grew around numerical analysis and scientific computing, including an early electronic computer installed in 1952 and the later spin-off of the computer science department in 1969.
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