Timeline of computational physics

1930s

• John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry create the first electronic non-programmable, digital computing device, the Atanasoff–Berry Computer, that lasted from 1937 to 1942.

  1940s

• Nuclear bomb and ballistics simulations at Los Alamos and BRL, respectively.
• Monte Carlo simulation is invented at Los Alamos by von Neumann, Ulam and Metropolis.
• First hydrodynamic simulations performed at Los Alamos.
• Ulam and von Neumann introduce the notion of cellular automata.

  1950s

• Equations of State Calculations by Fast Computing Machines introduces the Metropolis–Hastings algorithm. Also, important earlier independent work by Alder and S. Frankel.
• Fermi, Ulam and Pasta with help from Mary Tsingou, discover the Fermi–Pasta–Ulam problem.
• Research initiated into percolation theory.
• Molecular dynamics is formulated by Alder and Wainwright.

  1960s

• Using computational investigations of the 3-body problem, Minovitch formulates the gravity assist method.
• Glauber dynamics is invented for the Ising model.
• Edward Lorenz discovers the butterfly effect on a computer, attracting interest in chaos theory.
• Molecular dynamics is independently invented by Aneesur Rahman.
• W Kohn instigates the development of density functional theory, for which he shared the Nobel Chemistry Prize.
• Kruskal and Zabusky follow up the Fermi–Pasta–Ulam problem with further numerical experiments, and coin the term "soliton".
• Kawasaki dynamics is invented for the Ising model.
• Frenchman Verlet discovers a numerical integration algorithm, for dynamics, and the Verlet list.

  1970s

• Computer algebra replicates the work of Delaunay in Lunar theory.
• Veltman's calculations at CERN lead him and t'Hooft to valuable insights into Renormalizability of Electroweak theory. The computation has been cited as a key reason for the award of the Nobel prize that has been given to both.
• Hardy, Pomeau and de Pazzis introduce the first lattice gas model, abbreviated as the HPP model after its authors. These later evolved into lattice Boltzmann models.
• Wilson shows that continuum QCD is recovered for an infinitely large lattice with its sites infinitesimally close to one another, thereby beginning lattice QCD.

  1980s

• Italian physicists Car and Parrinello invent the Car–Parrinello method.
• Swendsen–Wang algorithm is invented in the field of Monte Carlo simulations.
• Fast multipole method is invented by Rokhlin and Greengard.
• U. Wolff invents the Wolff algorithm for statistical physics and Monte Carlo simulation.