Conjugacy and gradients in variational theory and analysis

Abstract

At the invitation of the Mathematical Association of America, John Todd and I have written a short history of the Institute for Numerical Analysis, 1947-1954, located on the campus of UCLA. This Institute, called INA, was a Section of the National Applied Mathematical Laboratories, which formed the Applied Mathematics Division of the National Bureau of Standards, a part of the Department of Commerce. In this brief history we were concerned mainly with the mathematical aspects of this program. In particular, we were concerned about who participated in the project, what did they do, and what was their University affiliation. It is not my intention to repeat the material presented in this history except perhaps for some special items of interest.