The Mathematica Programming Language

History

Mathematica is the world's only fully integrated environment for technical computing. Mathematica has been available since 1988 and is being used more and more in teaching, research, and in industry. A by-product of the symbolic computation system is a programming language that differs from traditional languages in many important ways.

Mathematica has become a standard in a great many organizations, and it is used today in all of the Fortune 500 companies, all of the 15 major departments of the U.S. government, and all of the 50 largest universities in the world.

The development of Mathematica has been carried out at Wolfram Research by a world-class team led by Stephen Wolfram. The success of Mathematica has fueled the continuing growth of Wolfram Research, and has allowed a large community of independent Mathematica-related businesses to develop. There are today nearly a hundred specialized commercial packages available for Mathematica, as well as several periodicals and more than two hundred books devoted to the system.

Significant Language Features

• LISP - Mathematica can manipulate lists using the data structures of the programming language LISP.
• PROLOG - Mathematica uses pattern matching capabilities taken from PROLOG to express mathematical rules in a simple way.
• APL - Mathematica's simple manipulation of structured data has been pioneered by APL.
• SIMULA, SMALLTALK, and C++ - Object-oriented elements make code development easier.
• PASCAL, FORTRAN, and C - Traditional procedural programming style.
• Other Features - Modularization and Built-In Functions

Areas of Application

• Sciences (physical, biological, social, and other)
            - Counts many of the world's foremost scientists among its enthusiastic supporters. It has played a crucial role in many
               important discoveries and has been the basis for thousands of technical papers.
• Engineering
            - Mathematica has become a standard tool for both development and production, and by now many of the world's
               important new products rely at one stage or another in their design on Mathematica.
• Commerce
            - Mathematica has played a significant role in the growth of sophisticated financial modeling, as well as being widely
               used in many kinds of general planning and analysis.
• Computer science and software development
            - Its language component is widely used as a research, prototyping, and interface environment.

Sample Programs

Related Links

Printed References

1. Höft, Hartmut F.W. and Margret H. (1998). Computing with Mathematica . Academic Press, San Diego, Ca.
2. Maeder, Roman (1994). The Mathematica Programmer . Academic Press, Chestnut Hill, Ma.
3. Wolfram, Stephen (1999). The Mathematica Book, Fourth Edition . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Ma.