Macsyma

Macsyma is a computer algebra system that was originally developed from 1968 to 1982 at the MIT AI Lab as part of Project MAC. It was the first comprehensive symbolic mathematics system.

The project was initiated by William A. Martin (polynomial arithmetic), Carl Engelman, and Joel Moses (indefinite integration, simplifier) in July, 1968. Additional early work was contributed by P. Loewe, T. Williams, Richard Fateman (rational functions, pattern matching, arbitrary precision floating-point), E. Tsiang (power series), and Paul Wang (limits, definite integrals).

In 1982, MIT submitted a copy of Macsyma to the United States Department of Energy, which was one of the major funders of Macsyma development. This version of Macsyma was called DOE Macsyma.

Macsyma was licensed to Symbolics in 1982. Symbolics developed Macsyma under Richard Pavelle for several years, but eventually came to see it as a diversion from the sales of Lisp machines, which they considered their main business. Macsyma, Inc., was founded in 1992 by Russell Noftkser, who had cofounded Symbolics, and purchased all rights to Macsyma from Symbolics and continued development for several years. In 1999, Macsyma was acquired by Tenedos LLC, a holding company. At present the holding company has not rereleased or resold Macsyma, but it continues to be distributed by Symbolics.

There is also an open source version, called Maxima, which is based on the 1982 version of the DOE Macsyma, and is under active development.

External links

• Symbolics, current Macsyma distributors
• Richard Petti's summary of the history of commercial Macsyma (remarks on the history of Macsyma by a cofounder of Macsyma, Inc.)
• [http://www.math.utexas.edu/pipermail/maxima/2003/005884.html more from Richard Petti
• Maxima - a sophisticated computer algebra system (Maxima home page at SourceForge.net)