Wolfram Research

Wolfram Research is an American multinational company that creates computational technology. Wolfram's flagship product is the technical computing program Wolfram Mathematica, first released on June 23, 1988. Other products include Wolfram Alpha, Wolfram SystemModeler, Wolfram Workbench,[2] gridMathematica, Wolfram Finance Platform,[3] webMathematica, the Wolfram Development Platform,[4] and the Wolfram Programming Lab.[5] Wolfram Research founder Stephen Wolfram is the CEO. The company is headquartered in Champaign, Illinois, United States.

Wolfram Research, Inc.
TypePrivate
IndustryComputer software, Publishing, Research and Development
Founded1987 (1987)
FounderStephen Wolfram, Theodore Gray
Headquarters
Champaign, Illinois
,
United States
Key people
Stephen Wolfram (President & CEO); Conrad Wolfram (Director of Strategic Development & Wolfram Research Europe Limited CEO)
ProductsWolfram Mathematica, Wolfram Workbench, gridMathematica, webMathematica, Wolfram Alpha, SystemModeler, Wolfram Programming Lab, Wolfram One, Wolfram Engine for Developers, Function Repository, Neural Network Repository, Data Repository
OwnerPrivately held
Number of employees
~700[1]
DivisionsWolfram Media Inc., Wolfram Research Europe Ltd. in the United Kingdom, Wolfram Research Asia Ltd. in Japan and Wolfram Research South America in Peru.
Websitewolfram.com

History

The company launched Wolfram Alpha, an answer engine on May 16, 2009. It brings a new approach to knowledge generation and acquisition that involves large amounts of curated computable data in addition to semantic indexing of text.[6]

Wolfram Research acquired MathCore Engineering AB on March 30, 2011.[7][8]

On July 21, 2011, Wolfram Research launched the Computable Document Format (CDF). CDF is an electronic document format[9] designed to allow easy authoring[10] of dynamically generated interactive content.

In June 2014, Wolfram Research officially introduced the Wolfram Language as a new general multi-paradigm programming language.[11] It is the primary programming language used in Mathematica.[12]

Products and resources

Mathematica
Main article: Wolfram Mathematica

Mathematica is a modern technical computing system spanning all areas of technical computing — including neural networks, machine learning, image processing, geometry, data science, visualizations, and others. The system is used in many technical, scientific, engineering, mathematical, and computing fields. In addition to the computational abilities of the system, Mathematica includes a unique and powerful notebook interface. Computational notebooks can be structured using a hierarchy of cells, which allow for outlining and sectioning of a document and support automatic numbering index creation. Documents can be presented in a slideshow environment for presentations and their contents are represented as Mathematica expressions that can be created, modified or analyzed by Mathematica programs or converted to other formats.

Wolfram|Alpha
Main article: Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha is a free online service that answers factual queries directly by computing the answer from externally sourced curated data, rather than providing a list of documents or web pages that might contain the answer as a search engine might. Users submit queries and computation requests via a text field and Wolfram Alpha then computes answers and relevant visualizations.

On February 8, 2012, Wolfram Alpha Pro was released, offering users additional features(e.g., the ability to upload many common file types and data — including raw tabular data, images, audio, XML, and dozens of specialized scientific, medical, and mathematical formats — for automatic analysis) for a monthly subscription fee.

In 2016, Wolfram Alpha Enterprise, a business-focused analytics tool, was launched. The program combines data supplied by a corporation with the algorithms from Wolfram Alpha to answer questions related to that corporation.[13]

Wolfram SystemModeler
Main article: Wolfram SystemModeler

Wolfram SystemModeler is a platform for engineering as well as life-science modeling and simulation based on the Modelica language. It provides an interactive graphical modeling and simulation environment and a customizable set of component libraries. The primary interface, ModelCenter, is an interactive graphical environment including a customizable set of component libraries. The software also provides a tight integration with Mathematica. Users can develop, simulate, document, and analyze their models within Mathematica notebooks.

Publishing and conferences

Wolfram Research publishes several free websites including the MathWorld and ScienceWorld encyclopedias. ScienceWorld, which launched in 2002, is divided into sites on chemistry, physics, astronomy and scientific biography.[14] In 2005, the physics site was deemed a "valuable resource" by American Scientist magazine.[15] However, by 2009, the astronomy site was said to suffer from outdated information, incomplete articles and link rot.[16]

The Wolfram Demonstrations Project is a collaborative site hosting interactive technical demonstrations powered by a free Mathematica Player runtime.

Wolfram Research publishes The Mathematica Journal.[17] Wolfram has also published several books via Wolfram Media, Wolfram's publishing arm.[18][19]

Wolfram Research has organized three Wolfram Science conferences in Boston, MA, Washington, D.C. and Burlington, VT in the United States in the years 2003, 2006 and 2007 respectively. Two other independent NKS Midwest conferences have taken place at the Indiana University, Bloomington in 2005 and 2008. Other independent workshops related to NKS research have also been organized overseas, such as JOUAL (Just One Universal Algorithm) at the CNR in Pisa, Italy in 2009.

Wolfram Research hosts the yearly Wolfram Technology Conference in Champaign, IL.[20] During this three-day conference, developers discuss the latest Wolfram technologies for mobile devices, cloud computing, interactive deployment, and more.

Wolfram Research also hosts the Wolfram Data Summit, a high-level gathering of innovators in data science.[21]

They are experimenting with electronic textbook creation.[22]

Media activities

Wolfram Research served as the mathematical consultant for the CBS television series Numb3rs, a show about the mathematical aspects of crime-solving.[23]

See also

References
  1. "Career and Employment Opportunities at Wolfram". Wolfram. Retrieved 2020-07-16.
  2. "Wolfram Workbench: State-of-the-Art Integrated Development Environment". www.wolfram.com. Retrieved 2016-08-01.
  3. "Wolfram Finance Platform: Ultimate Financial Computation Environment". www.wolfram.com. Retrieved 2016-08-01.
  4. "Wolfram Development Platform: Introducing a Programming Revolution". www.wolfram.com. Retrieved 2016-08-01.
  5. "Wolfram Programming Lab: Computational Thinking Starts Here". www.wolfram.com. Retrieved 2016-08-01.
  6. Johnson, Bobbie (2009-03-09). "British search engine 'could rival Google'". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 2009-03-09.
  7. Rao, Leena. "Wolfram Research Acquires Modeling And Simulation Software Developer MathCore". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2017-11-14.
  8. Wolfram, Stephen. "Launching a New Era in Large-Scale Systems Modeling".
  9. Wolfram Alpha Creator plans to delete the PDF The Telegraph (UK)
  10. Wolfram makes data interactive PC World
  11. "Wolfram Language reference page". reference.wolfram.com. Retrieved 2014-05-14.
  12. Slate's article Stephen Wolfram's New Programming Language: He Can Make The World Computable, March 6, 2014. Retrieved on 2014-05-14.
  13. Castellanos, Sara (February 7, 2019). "Computing Pioneer Stephen Wolfram Creates Data-Analysis Tool for Business". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  14. W., Weisstein, Eric. "ScienceWorld FAQ". scienceworld.wolfram.com. Retrieved 2017-07-25.
  15. "American Scientist Online – Eric Weisstein's World of Physics". 2005-03-19. Archived from the original on 2005-03-19. Retrieved 2017-07-25.
  16. Johnson, Gareth J (2010-05-04). "Eric Weissteins's World of Astronomy". Reference Reviews. 24 (4): 32–33. doi:10.1108/09504121011045728. ISSN 0950-4125.
  17. The Mathematica Journal official site.
  18. Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science sets a new standard in more ways than one by Charlotte Abbott, Publishers Weekly, 6/24/2002
  19. "Wolfram Media: Titles". www.wolfram-media.com. Retrieved 2016-08-01.
  20. "Wolfram Technology Conference 2016".
  21. "Wolfram Data Summit 2016: Trends & Innovations in the Universe of Data". www.wolframdatasummit.org. Retrieved 2016-08-01.
  22. Eisenberg, Anne (17 December 2011). "Online Textbooks Aim to Make Science Leap From the Page". The New York Times.
  23. "Numb3rs 307: Blackout". Cornell University. Retrieved 13 March 2012.
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