With great sadness I did read that Prof. Veltman passed away some days ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martinus_J._G._Veltman You might wonder why I post this sad news here. The answer is his computer program Schoonschip, written in Assembly language, for symbolic manipulation of mathematical equations, which is now considered the very first computer algebra system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schoonschip What is a Computer algebra system? A computer algebra system (CAS) or symbolic algebra system (SAS) is any mathematical software with the ability to manipulate mathematical expressions in a way similar to the traditional manual computations of mathematicians and scientists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_algebra_system Computer programs like for example Mathematica (or Wolfram Mathematica) are in some way based on it. https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schoonschip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram_Mathematica I'm just posting this for those of you interested in some background info in such mathematical programs. I gave links to several Wikipedia pages and gave some quotes from there.
For the Dutchies and those who can read Dutch: The Dutch newspaper NRC had a long article on 7 January 2021. The online version is here: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2021/01/06/een-voor-nederland-te-uitgesproken-gigant-a4026328 I have the paper version. It gives a bit more info, in particular about his computer program Schoonschip. A bit more info from that article: In 1963 he wasn't allowed to write it at CERN. He went to Stanford where he was allowed to write it in September that year, in Assembly on an IBM 7490. By Christmas that year it was working for the first time. Later CERN went to CDC computer. The program had to be "translated" to CDC. Again there were "troubles" with permission (...). When he left CERN in 1966 (to become professor in Utrecht) he left there in CERN 10.000 punch-cards with the program.
