NA_Digest and NA_Net

The NA-Digest is an electronic newsletter for the numerical analysis and scientific software community. The NA-Digest is one of world's first examples of social networking. The Digest is one of the forces that makes our community a living, viable community.

The Digest is part of NA-Net, which also includes Netlib, a collection of mathematical software, papers, and databases.

For its first forty years, the NA-Digest has had only four editors. Now, we are adding two more. As we do that, I would like to take a personal look back at the history of the NA-Digest.

Contents

Gene and Mark

Like many other developments in the numerical analysis world, the Digest began with Gene Golub. In the early 1980's, Golub was chair of Stanford's Computer Science Department. Email was a new thing and Gene maintained a list of email addresses for his many friends around the world. Email addresses came in many different formats; today's system of domain names was not yet in wide spread use.

In 1984, Mark Kent, one of Gene's grad students, with help from Ray Tuminaro, Mark Crispin and Dan Kolkowitz, wrote software that used Gene's list in an email forwarding service. Mail sent to

na.name@su-score

would be forwarded to the person with that last name. And email sent to

na@su-score

would be forwarded to everyone on the list.

Gene and Mark Kent began to gather contributions together and send the collection out periodically. By February 1987, this had evolved into a moderated weekly newsletter. Gene dubbed these email services the NA-Net.

Nick Trefethen has this memory.

  Early in the days of email, domain names were all over the place.
  I think there was a period when Gene was using xxx.na for the
  names of numerical analysts.  Then somebody decided addresses should
  end with the country, giving us .uk and .fr and .ch and all
  that.  For a period, we found that a lot of our numerical
  analysis emails were being directed to Namibia!

In 1987, Gene asked me to moderate NA-Digest temporarily while he went on a sabbatical. That temporary position ultimately lasted 18 years, until 2005.

Jack and Eric

Jack Dongarra began his career at Argonne National Laboratory. Jack's colleague, Eric Grosse, began his career at Bell Labs. In 1984, Jack and Eric created Netlib, a software repository and distribution service, and merged it with NA-Net. In 1989, Jack and the NA-Net system moved from Argonne to Oak Ridge National Lab and the University of Tennessee.

Keith Moore, at the University of Tennessee, rewrote the NA-Net software and maintained the servers for many years.

Gerald Ragghianti, the Technical Services Leader at Tennessee's Innovative Computer Lab, currently maintains the NA-Net software and servers.

Tammy and Danny

In 2005, I asked Tammy Kolda, who was then at Sandia Labs in Livermore, to be the NA-Digest editor. Tammy's Wikipedia page reveals that her given name is "Tamara", but everybody calls her "Tammy". She left Sandia is 2021 and now has her own consulting company, MathSci.ai.

In 2010, Tammy recommended that Danny Dunlavy, from Sandia Labs in Albuquerque, take over as editor. He has been the editor for 14 years. Danny's day job at Sandia's Center for Computing Research involves a wide range of fields including computer architecture, cognitive modeling and discrete mathematics.

David and Alex

Starting next week, NA-Digest and NA-Net will move lock, stock, and barrel to Cornell University. The new editors are David Bindell and Alex Townsend. Cornell's IT organization will be taking over the logistics.

David, Alex and Anil Damle are also the hosts for Householder XXII, June 8-13, 2025.

Archive

Every issue of NA-Digest since February 1987 is available at https://www.netlib.org/na-digest-html.

Members

When I succeeded Gene as editor in 1987, there were about 800 names on the NA-Net mailing list. Today, in 2024, there are a little over 10,000. Discontinuities in the size of the list result when unused and illegitimate names are removed.

Important Postings

I have made three personally important announcements in the Digest over the years.

October 29, 1989

In 1989 I was working at Ardent Computer, a startup in Silicon Valley. I announced in NA-Digest that MathWorks was looking for a numerical analyst. (Note the MathWorks telephone number near the end of this announcement.)

  From: Cleve Moler <na.moler@na-net.stanford.edu>
  Date: Sun Oct 29 10:39:38 PST 1989
  Subject: Positions at The MathWorks

  The MathWorks is the company which develops and markets MATLAB.
  The company currently employs about 30 people and expects to
  add three or four more soon. The company headquarters is in
  East Natick, Massachusetts, which is about a half hour drive
  west of Boston.

  The background and interests expected for the various positions
  available range from numerical linear algebra and matrix computation
  to systems programming and graphics. Educational level and
  experience expected range from inexperienced beginner willing
  to learn to seasoned Ph.D. with a personal library of M-files.

  For more information, send email to na.moler@na-net.stanford.edu
  or phone me at 408-732-0400. Or, contact the MathWorks' president,
  John Little, with email to jnl@mathworks.com, phone 508-653-1415,
  or write to:

  The MathWorks
  21 Eliot Street
  South Natick, MA 01760

November 26, 1989

Shortly after that announcement, Ardent imploded and I said that I was taking the job myself.

  From: Cleve Moler <moler@mathworks.com>
  Date: Sun Nov 26 09:16:32 PST 1989
  Subject: Change of Address for Moler

  A couple of weeks ago, I made an announcement here that
  The MathWorks, the MATLAB company, was looking to fill several
  positions, including one for a numerical analyst. Now, I've
  decided to take that slot myself. I'm one of the founders of
  MathWorks, and have always been a consultant to the company, but
  now I'll be a full time employee. For a while at least, I'll
  be working out of my home in California, even though MathWorks
  headquarters is in Massachusetts. (There are already a couple
  of other MathWorks developers in the Bay Area.)
  . . .
  My electronic address is "moler@mathworks.com". If your mailer
  can't find the route via uunet to mathworks.com, you can still
  use "na.moler@na-net.stanford.edu".

November 16, 2007

In November 2007 I was attending the Super Computing conference in Reno. I had rented a car and intended to drive to the Bay Area after the conference. But my wife called me and said, "Hey Cleve, have you heard that Gene is in the hospital?" I left SC immediately and drove to Palo Alto. Two days later we sent out a special issue of the Digest:

  From: Cleve Moler <Cleve.Moler@mathworks.com>
  Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2007 17:55:42 -0500
  Subject: Gene Golub, 1932 - 2007

  Gene Golub, founder of the NA Digest, passed away today, Friday, November 16,
  at the Stanford University Hospital. He was 75 years old.

  Gene returned home to Stanford recently from a trip to Hong Kong. He was
  planning to leave again Tuesday on another trip, this one to Zurich where the
  ETH was to honor him with a special degree. Instead, Sunday night he went to
  the emergency room because he was "feeling lousy". On Tuesday, he was found
  to have AML, acute myelogenous leukemia, a form of cancer that affects the
  white blood cells. This is a potentially curable disease and he was expecting
  to begin chemotherapy today. But serious complications developed suddenly
  over night.

  I was able to see Gene for an hour last night and he was in reasonably good
  spirits. Mike Saunders was trying to get Gene's laptop to use dial-up over
  the hospital's phone system because Gene said he was a couple of days behind
  on his email. I was planning to get a wireless card for his machine today.
  None of us had any idea how suddenly the situation would worsen.

  The Stanford ICME students have created a memorial blog at
  http://genehgolub.blogspot.com .

  Our community has lost its foremost member. He was a valued colleague and
  friend. Goodbye, Gene.

  -- Cleve Moler

Thanks

References

Jack Dongarra, Gene Golub, Eric Grosse, Cleve Moler and Keith Moore. "Netlib and NA-Net: Building a Scientific Computing Community", IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, (Volume: 30, Issue: 2, April-June 2008). A PDF is available here.

Mark Kent, The Numerical Analysis Net (NA-NET), Technical Report 85, ETH Zurich, Institut fuer Informatik, 1988.

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