[Maxima-discuss] Schoonship Form

[Michel T. <ta...@lp...>]

Hello,

i have found the following article which may be of interest to some of you:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/crucial-computer-program-for-particle-physics-at-risk-of-obsolescence-20221201/?mc_cid=27b6cad563

Some statements are wrong, notably Schoonship was developed by Veltman 
in assembly language of the

CDC7600, a beautiful computer who disappeared long ago. The machine 
words were quite long so Veltman used

parts of words to store information. With this program he did 
computations of radiative corrections in the standard model

which gave him access to the Nobel prize. When the CDC disappeared the 
program was rewritten by Vermaseren in fortran,

and given the name of Form. Presently i suppose such extremely 
complicated computations are no more of

pressing interest to physicists, explaining the disillusion apparent in 
the article. However saying that Mathematica is now

the replacement is perhaps an overstatement. For sure Mathematica is 
used to draw the Feynman diagrams, but computing

them is another story.


-- 
Michel Talon