GAUSSIAN
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Generally, the word gaussian pertains to Carl Friedrich Gauss and his ideas.
GAUSSIAN is a computational chemistry software program, first written by John Pople. The name originates from Pople's use of Gaussian orbitals to speed up calculations compared to those using Slater-type orbitals. The practice improved performance on slower computer hardware and facilitated the growth of computational chemistry, particularly ab initio methods such as Hartree-Fock. Gaussian's copyright was originally held by Carnegie Mellon University, and later by Gaussian, Inc.
Gaussian quickly became one of the most popular and widely-used computational chemistry packages. Prof. Pople and his research group were among those who pushed the development of the package, including cutting-edge research in quantum chemistry and other fields.
[edit] Banned by GAUSSIAN
A number of prominent scientists, including some of those who originally wrote substantial parts of the GAUSSIAN code, have been banned by Gaussian Inc. from using the software.[1] Individuals report being banned as a result of working on competing products or for the publication of comparative benchmarks. This practice is criticized for inhibiting the ability of those banned to peer review papers that use the GAUSSIAN code. Creators of Gaussian point out that they publish their algorithms, making them part of the public domain and accessible to others.
