Richard J. Fateman Richard J. FatemanClick here to see more recent informal photo (2008)
My interests include scientific programming environments; algebraic manipulation by computer (programs like Macsyma, Mathematica, Maple, Axiom, Reduce); distributed computing; analysis of algorithms; programming and measurement of large systems; design and implementation of programming languages; digital document analysis (optical character recognition).
Interested in applying to graduate school in EECS? You need not contact me, but should follow this link instead. Note that I am officially retired. While I am happy to discuss research topics with students, I cannot provide research stipends.
There is a public ftp repository of programs, papers, and reviews written by my students and myself. I've linked a subset of them here: Berkeley computer algebra papers. Some pointers to other work in symbolic mathematical computing can be found by visiting various project home pages. One for which I've contributed is the (now public version) of the Macsyma program, named Maxima. There is a mailing list associated with that program that has become (sometimes) interesting. A recent glance at sourceforge stats shows that the summer, 2010 version had over 215,000 downloads. There appear to be over 2 million downloads as of 2012.
We used to run a symbolic integral look-up service called TILU,
but the chasing after various hosts for it has become tiresome. TILU has lasted
through about 4 hosts.
You can also get a copy of 2171 integrals that TILU can do, and see if
you can do them all, and if you can do them faster. This table
combines many simple examples (for timing) and a few harder ones near
the end (for challenges). This is a preliminary version, and doesn't
include that much of the literature on integration yet. Here's
the list of examples as of May 23, 1996. It
is 163k bytes. We have a file with the answers too, naturally. Our
answers may be more cautious than those that come out of a computer
algebra system. For example, our answers will sometimes include
variations that depend on constraints on the parameters in the
integrand. If you wish to host TILU locally, the source code is
available.
My recent interests have included a very generic-arithmetic system to run in lisp, linking Lisp to GMP, fast polynomial arithmetic, a version of the "Chebfun" system to work in symbolic systems, integration of highly oscillatory functions using numerical and symbolic transformations, and how better pattern matching rules might make systems for computer algebra more intuitive (by some lights, merely nasty diatribes concerning a popular computer algebra system). Discussions of these topics are in a directory of various papers where the recent ones tend to be unpublished drafts. I tend to hang out on the sci.math.symbolic newsgroup.
Computer algebra fans may also wish to see work done by my colleague John Canny and his students, which in the past has included applications of algebraic algorithms.
Other work at Berkeley by CS faculty in scientific computing can be found by following the links to their home pages: James Demmel, Jonathan Shewchuk, and William Kahan. There are a host of other faculty at Berkeley in other departments with related interests (math, engineering, astronomy), as well as nearby activities at Lawrence Berkeley Lab.
Some visitors to this page have been directed here because of an interest in a Common Lisp package and libraries called MockMMA. see the directory for a recent revision of this Mockmma. This version is more directed to being compatible with the source-forge program Maxima, even if Maxima is being run in GCL, a Lisp dialect lacking in full upper-lower case control. (This is a disadvantage because Mathematica uses many mixed-case identifiers). To the user, this somewhat resembles Mathematica (tm), but has the advantage of being totally open (full source code). One can manipulate polynomials in several variables over the integers, rational functions, and a variety of other mathematical objects. Manipulations include simplification, differentiation, integration, evaluation, pattern matching, etc.
While I'm pointing to old software, here's where you can get a free copy of the final (1982?) university release of Franz Lisp Opus 38.92 for VAX. I don't know why you would want this old stuff, but the university software distribution office has closed and they left a copy with me.
A somewhat broader view of the problem of encoding scientific documents is given in the working paper More Versatile Scientific Documents. This is a text more-or-less related to the slides I used, at the ICDAR97 conference in Ulm, Germany. You might prefer to browse through the continually changing link page on this topic.
Even more generally, if you want to learn what we were doing in terms of digital library activities at Berkeley, see the links from the (former) digital library project home page. If you wish to understand something of the interesting problems and solutions in the area of "OCR" you might wish to look at the lectures for a course on Document Image Analysis taught in 2000 with Henry Baird. Browsing around there will get you assignments and related material.
More recently we've looked at dynamic entry of handwritten symbols, specifically for mathematics, using a tablet and stylus (or a Tablet PC), and/or speaking mathematics.
Richard Fateman received a BS in Physics and Mathematics from Union College in 1966, and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University in 1971. His thesis work concerned the design and implementation of algorithms for the Macsyma computer algebra system. He taught in the Mathematics department at MIT from 1971 to 1974 and then joined the Berkeley Computer Science faculty. He was instrumental in originating the work on Berkeley's VAX UNIX system, and led the development of the original Franz Lisp at Berkeley. He served on the Common Lisp design committee and on the IEEE 754 binary floating-point arithmetic standards committee. He served as Berkeley's Computer Science Chair from 1987 to 1990.
He has been the principal investigator on grants from DOE, NSF, and SDF as well as many industrial firms including IBM, DEC, HP. He has authored more than 75 technical papers, mostly on issues related to computer algebra, programming languages and environments, scientific applications, and document image analysis.
In his spare time he travels, takes takes photos and grows bromeliads. Since retiring, he continues to write papers, consults on computing topics, and has served as an expert witness in patent and software intellectual property disputes (user interfaces, OCR). Recently (April 2012) he worked with Barnes and Noble in successfully defending the Nook against patent-infringement claims by Microsoft.
He volunteers as a disaster action team leader and is currently lead for the government liaison activity at the Alameda County (California) branch of the American Red Cross. KJ6BIH is his amateur radio (ham) call sign.
His daughter Johanna is a member of the punk electronica / riot-grrl band Le Tigre. To hear her interviewed by Terry Gross of National Public Radio, visit the Fresh Air archive site for September 5, 2000 . Fans may be interested in this DVD of their last tour, Who Took the Bomp.
His daughter Abigail is an environmental planner working in the Bay area, with a special interest in urban creeks and the award-winning and visually stunning Contra Costa County Watershed Atlas.
His wife Martha served as Director of Central Computing Services on the Berkeley campus before retiring in January, 2003.
Email:
fateman@cs.berkeley.edu
