Content area
Abstract
Using recursion, a 'divide and conquer' programming approach in which an algorithm repeatedly reapplies itself, the fast Fourier transform (FFT) simplifies the problem of computing a Fourier transform to just N log2(N) steps. Paul Adams, who directs the molecular biophysics and integrated bioimaging division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, recalls that when he refined the structure of the bacterial protein GroEL in 1995 (ref. 2), the calculation took "many, many hours, ifnot days", even with the FFT and a supercomputer. [...]resources proved their worth in July 1983, when separate teams led by Michael Waterfield, a protein biochemist at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London, and Doolittle independently reported a similarity between the sequences of a particular human growth factor and a protein in a virus that causes cancer in monkeys. Forecast leader: the general circulation model (1969) At the close of the Second World War, computer pioneerJohn von Neumann began turning computers that a few years earlier had been calculating ballistics trajectories and weapon designs towards the problem of weather prediction.