Wolfram Research, Inc. ( ) 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
WolframAlpha,
Wolfram SystemModeler, Wolfram Workbench,
gridMathematica, Wolfram Finance Platform,
webMathematica
Wolfram Mathematica is a software system with built-in libraries for several areas of technical computing that allow machine learning, statistics, symbolic computation, data manipulation, network analysis, time series analysis, NLP, optimiza ...
, the Wolfram Cloud, and the Wolfram Programming Lab. Wolfram Research founder
Stephen Wolfram is the
CEO
A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...
. The company is headquartered in
Champaign, Illinois, United States.
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.
Wolfram Research acquired MathCore Engineering AB on March 30, 2011.
On July 21, 2011, Wolfram Research launched the
Computable Document Format (CDF). CDF is an electronic document format designed to allow easy authoring of dynamically generated interactive content.
In June 2014, Wolfram Research officially introduced the
Wolfram Language as a new general multi-paradigm programming language. It is the primary programming language used in
Mathematica
Wolfram Mathematica is a software system with built-in libraries for several areas of technical computing that allow machine learning, statistics, symbolic computation, data manipulation, network analysis, time series analysis, NLP, optimizat ...
.
On April 15, 2020, Wolfram Research received $5,575,000 to help pay its employees during the
COVID-19 pandemic as part of the
U.S. government
The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a fede ...
's
Paycheck Protection Program administered by the
Small Business Administration.
Products and resources
Mathematica
Mathematica is
technical computing software with features for
neural networks
A neural network is a network or circuit of biological neurons, or, in a modern sense, an artificial neural network, composed of artificial neurons or nodes. Thus, a neural network is either a biological neural network, made up of biological ...
,
machine learning,
image processing
An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensiona ...
,
geometry,
data science
Data science is an interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge and insights from noisy, structured and unstructured data, and apply knowledge from data across a br ...
,
visualizations. Mathematica includes a
notebook interface and can produce slides for presentations.
Wolfram Alpha
Wolfram Alpha is a free online service that
answers
Answer commonly refers to response to a question.
Answer may also refer to:
* Answer (law), any reply to a question, counter-statement or defense in a legal procedure
Music
* Answer, an element of a fugue
Albums
* ''Answer'' (Angela Aki albu ...
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.
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
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. In 2005, the physics site was deemed a "valuable resource" by ''
American Scientist
__NOTOC__
''American Scientist'' (informally abbreviated ''AmSci'') is an American bimonthly science and technology magazine published since 1913 by Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. In the beginning of 2000s the headquarters was in New ...
'' magazine. However, by 2009, the astronomy site was said to suffer from outdated information, incomplete articles and
link rot.
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''. Wolfram has also published several books via Wolfram Media, Wolfram's publishing arm. In addition, they have experimented with electronic textbook creation.
Media activities
Wolfram Research served as the mathematical consultant for the
CBS television series ''
Numb3rs'', a show about the mathematical aspects of crime-solving.
See also
* ''
A New Kind of Science''
*
Ed Pegg, Jr.
Edward Taylor Pegg Jr. (born December 7, 1963) is an expert on mathematical puzzles and is a self-described recreational mathematician. He wrote an online puzzle column called Ed Pegg Jr.'s ''Math Games'' for the Mathematical Association of Amer ...
*
Eric W. Weisstein
References
External links
*
Official Wolfram Research Twitter AccountHoovers Fact Sheeton Wolfram Research, Inc.
The Mathematics Behind NUMB3RS Wolfram's site on NUMB3RS mathematics.
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Champaign, Illinois
Cloud computing providers
Data companies
Mathematical software
Multinational companies headquartered in the United States
Software companies based in Illinois
Software companies established in 1987
Software companies of the United States