# Julia language co-creators win James H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-language-co-creators-win-james-h-wilkinson-prize-for-numerical-software/19038>\
**Category:** Community\
**Created:** [December 27, 2018, 5:07pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-language-co-creators-win-james-h-wilkinson-prize-for-numerical-software/19038 "2018-12-27T17:07:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 13\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![viralbshah](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/viralbshah/32/54_2.png) [@viralbshah](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/viralbshah)\
**Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 5:07pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-language-co-creators-win-james-h-wilkinson-prize-for-numerical-software/19038/1 "2018-12-27T17:07:52Z")

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Hello all,

I wanted to share with everyone that Julia won the 2019 James H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software. This recognition is a great milestone for our community and it is a nice note to start the next year on. 🙂

Here’s the MIT press release:

> **[Julia language co-creators win James H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software](https://news.mit.edu/2018/julia-language-co-creators-win-james-wilkinson-prize-numerical-software-1226)**
>
> Three co-developers of the Julia programming language — Jeff Bezanson, Stefan Karpinski, and Viral Shah — have won the James H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software.

This is the page for the prize itself (which will be updated closer to the time the actual prize is awarded at SIAM CSE):

> **[James H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software | SIAM](https://www.siam.org/prizes-recognition/major-prizes-lectures/detail/james-h-wilkinson-prize-for-numerical-software)**
>
> The James H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software recognizes innovative software in scientific computing by researchers in the earlier stages of …

-viral

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**Author:** ![Ronis\_BR](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/ronis_br/32/50999_2.png) [@Ronis\_BR](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Ronis_BR)\
**Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 5:23pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-language-co-creators-win-james-h-wilkinson-prize-for-numerical-software/19038/2 "2018-12-27T17:23:13Z")

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Congratulations! It was well deserved! Here in Brazil (INPE), Julia opened a huge amount of possibilities to analyze space missions, create satellite simulations, use evolutionary algorithms to search for optimal solutions for spacecraft design, etc. This is something I would not be able to do using other languages with so little effort.

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**Author:** ![jamanrique](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/jamanrique/32/5133_2.png) [@jamanrique](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jamanrique)\
**Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 5:23pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-language-co-creators-win-james-h-wilkinson-prize-for-numerical-software/19038/3 "2018-12-27T17:23:16Z")

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Congratulations to all the Julia team for your awesome work 😃

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**Author:** ![lucatrv](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/lucatrv/32/5650_2.png) [@lucatrv](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/lucatrv)\
**Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 8:40pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-language-co-creators-win-james-h-wilkinson-prize-for-numerical-software/19038/4 "2018-12-27T20:40:48Z")

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Congratulations for this prestigious award!!! 👍👍👍

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**Author:** ![chakravala](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/chakravala/32/6832_2.png) [@chakravala](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/chakravala)\
**Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 10:42pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-language-co-creators-win-james-h-wilkinson-prize-for-numerical-software/19038/5 "2018-12-27T22:42:11Z")

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This is awesome! I actually have a package named `Wilkinson` which I have not registered yet (because the name `NumericalAnalysis` was too broad). I wrote a paper for the AES Julia special edition in which I proved a new generalized Wilkinson-type numerical error bound and used Julia for the calculations, which is why I changed the package name to `Wilkinson`. I waited to change the name because I didn’t want to confuse the reviewers of the article, but now seems like a good time to follow through with the name change:

> **[GitHub - chakravala/Wilkinson.jl: Toolkit for studying numerical analysis and...](https://github.com/chakravala/Wilkinson.jl)**
>
> Toolkit for studying numerical analysis and floating point algebra round-off - GitHub - chakravala/Wilkinson.jl: Toolkit for studying numerical analysis and floating point algebra round-off

Cool that you won the Wilkinson prize, didn’t know such a thing exists when I started this paper / package.

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**Author:** ![chakravala](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/chakravala/32/6832_2.png) [@chakravala](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/chakravala)\
**Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 11:29pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-language-co-creators-win-james-h-wilkinson-prize-for-numerical-software/19038/6 "2018-12-27T23:29:42Z")

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Since it’s not so obvious what the `Wilkinson` package does from the current README, here is an example. The new generalized Wilkinson-type error bound I proved in my paper allows the prediction of a round off error bound for any type of polynomial form (previously only the Horner form and Basis forms have been investigated). Here is what this looks like with actual data generated with `Wilkinson` in Julia

Shown below is the predicted error bound for the round off error of a polynomial, and also the actual round off error computed using polynomial evaluation normalized by arbitrary precision float for comparison.

![Screenshot_2018-12-27_18-19-24](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/original/3X/5/5/5586b421628062ff61c163a4224025d23c530a4d.png)

Using the table below, I am able to make predictions about what is the most optimal form of a polynomial, satisfying both the least Wilkinson-type error bound and also minimal memory usage, etc.

 ![Screenshot_2018-12-27_18-18-57](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/original/3X/f/1/f15edd404315f0ecb6edffb9cc6cf015e6de8427.png)

The main result is a new characteristic method, which is able to predict the ordering of the polynomial forms in terms of the generalized Wilkinson-type round off error bound, which is enabled by Julia AST.

This research discovery would not have happened if Julia did not exist, because then I wouldn’t have been messing around with this kind of thing using the Julia abstract syntax tree (AST) representations.

You can read a draft of the paper here: [GitHub - chakravala/Wilkinson.jl: Toolkit for studying numerical analysis and floating point algebra round-off](https://github.com/chakravala/Wilkinson.jl/wiki/poly.pdf)

So, thank you for the Julia AST, which led me to this discovery, which is also related to James H. Wilkinson, whom I also referenced in my paper.

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**Author:** ![viralbshah](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/viralbshah/32/54_2.png) [@viralbshah](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/viralbshah)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2018, 5:54am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-language-co-creators-win-james-h-wilkinson-prize-for-numerical-software/19038/9 "2018-12-28T05:54:00Z")

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**Author:** ![PetrKryslUCSD](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/petrkryslucsd/32/215825_2.png) [@PetrKryslUCSD](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/PetrKryslUCSD)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2018, 6:16am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-language-co-creators-win-james-h-wilkinson-prize-for-numerical-software/19038/10 "2018-12-28T06:16:59Z")

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Congratulations to you all. And many thanks for creating the Julia language. I haven’t had so much fun programming since I submitted my first batch of punch cards of Fortran IV!

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**Author:** ![ninjaaron](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/ninjaaron/32/6392_2.png) [@ninjaaron](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ninjaaron)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2018, 10:45pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-language-co-creators-win-james-h-wilkinson-prize-for-numerical-software/19038/11 "2018-12-28T22:45:40Z")

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Awesome! Nobody deserves it more than you. I always tell people, “Julia is the language I always wanted to create, but never could have.” You guys should be so proud of what you all have accomplished. The award just serves to confirm what we here already knew: Julia is an extraordinary achievement.

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**Author:** ![sairus7](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/sairus7/32/10816_2.png) [@sairus7](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/sairus7)\
**Post date:** [December 29, 2018, 2:21pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-language-co-creators-win-james-h-wilkinson-prize-for-numerical-software/19038/12 "2018-12-29T14:21:16Z")

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Can we read about this in more details somewhere?

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**Author:** ![Ronis\_BR](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/ronis_br/32/50999_2.png) [@Ronis\_BR](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Ronis_BR)\
**Post date:** [December 29, 2018, 8:18pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-language-co-creators-win-james-h-wilkinson-prize-for-numerical-software/19038/13 "2018-12-29T20:18:37Z")

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Hi @sairus7,

There is one paper describing the simulator that was built:

[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1063293X18804006](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1063293X18804006)

A post in Julia Computing website:

[https://juliacomputing.com/case-studies/BrazilNationalinstituteforspaceResearch.html](https://juliacomputing.com/case-studies/BrazilNationalinstituteforspaceResearch.html)

And the two packages I registered that are used in all the tools:

> **[GitHub - JuliaSpace/SatelliteToolbox.jl: A toolbox for satellite analysis...](https://github.com/JuliaSpace/SatelliteToolbox.jl)**
>
> A toolbox for satellite analysis written in julia language. - GitHub - JuliaSpace/SatelliteToolbox.jl: A toolbox for satellite analysis written in julia language.

> **[GitHub - JuliaSpace/ReferenceFrameRotations.jl: A toolbox to represent 3D...](https://github.com/JuliaSpace/ReferenceFrameRotations.jl)**
>
> A toolbox to represent 3D rotations of coordinate frames for Julia language. - GitHub - JuliaSpace/ReferenceFrameRotations.jl: A toolbox to represent 3D rotations of coordinate frames for Julia lan...

Of course, fell free to PM me about anything you want to know 🙂

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**Author:** ![mkretlow](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/mkretlow/32/16295_2.png) [@mkretlow](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mkretlow)\
**Post date:** [January 3, 2019, 12:30pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-language-co-creators-win-james-h-wilkinson-prize-for-numerical-software/19038/14 "2019-01-03T12:30:40Z")

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Congrats from my side as well. KISS: thank you for Julia !

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**Author:** ![John\_Gibson](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/john_gibson/32/5321_2.png) [@John\_Gibson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/John_Gibson)\
**Post date:** [January 7, 2019, 4:00pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-language-co-creators-win-james-h-wilkinson-prize-for-numerical-software/19038/15 "2019-01-07T16:00:47Z")

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Wow! Congratulations on this much, much deserved award!