The GNU Scientific Library (GSL) is a numerical library for C and C++ programmers. It is free software under the GNU General Public License. The library provides a wide range of mathematical routines such as random number generators, special functions and least-squares fitting. There are over 1000 functions in total with an extensive test suite. The complete range of subject areas covered by the library includes, Complex Numbers Roots of Polynomials Special Functions Vectors and Matrices Permutations Sorting BLAS Support Linear Algebra Eigensystems Fast Fourier Transforms Quadrature Random Numbers Quasi-Random Sequences Random Distributions Statistics Histograms N-Tuples Monte Carlo Integration Simulated Annealing Differential Equations Interpolation Numerical Differentiation Chebyshev Approximation Series Acceleration Discrete Hankel Transforms Root-Finding Minimization Least-Squares Fitting Physical Constants IEEE Floating-Point Discrete Wavelet Transforms Basis splines Unlike the licenses of proprietary numerical libraries the license of GSL does not restrict scientific cooperation. It allows you to share your programs freely with others.
On September 20, 1996, Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdös passed away. He published more scientific papers than any other mathematician in history, with hundreds of collaborators.
On October 23, 1635, German astronomer and mathematician Wilhelm Schickard, who constructued the very first mechanical calculator, passed away. His famous calculator was able to perform additions and subtractions. For more complicated operations, it provided so-called Napier bones, named after the Scottish mathematician John Napier, who came up with the idea of logarithms. Although it is widely believed that the first mechanical calculating device was created by the French mathematician Blaise Pascal in 1642. However, that distinction actually belongs to Wilhelm Schickard.
The current release of this package typesets mathematics with unicode input and using OpenType maths fonts. (There is little compatibility with older maths packages.) XeTeX support is well tested, though LuaTeX support less so.
The package can typeset using STIX fonts, the XITS development of those fonts, the Asana-Math fonts and the commercial Cambria Math fonts. There is no support yet for any extra alphabets in the Unicode ‘private use area'.
The package relies on recent versions of the fontspec package and the l3kernel and l3packages bundles.