Bill Dubuque wrote:
<< generally correct statement about macsyma programmers' ignorance of the
finer points of computing with algebraic functions >>
>
>
>If anyone can revive Macsyma in any context (academic,
>commercial) I'd be very interested in being involved.
>I've invested far too many years (25) of my life to
>stand by and let it all go to waste. Unfortunately, given
>the present state of affairs, I don't know any way to make
>a living on Macsyma. Perhaps someone in academia (Fateman,
>Wang?) can manage to get funding to continue research.
>
>
The list of people getting funding from NSF / CISE directorate or elsewhere
in NSF can be found by starting at this page:
https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/a6/A6Start.htm
I searched for "macsyma" in full-text search (of abstracts) and got 13
hits total since 1987. The most recent was awarded in 1993, I think.
"symbolic computation system" got 6 hits.
Anyway, you could start with this and find out who is getting funding.
A search for "fateman" got 6 hits. You can look at them and figure
that any grant that is less than $100,000 per year will not be
able to pay for even one senior staff scientist full time. Note that
$100k from NSF translates to something like $60k after overhead.
Then if you pay benefits (health, etc. out of what is left, you cannot
have much of a salary.) You can pay a grad student plus some
summer (faculty) salary and part of a clerk...
And if you think that all you have to do to get funding from NSF
is ask, well it doesn't work that way. There is a lot of competition,
and I don't mean symbolic computing types battling each other for
the money. The same category has held geometric computation,
graphics, numerics, ... and since reviewers know those other areas
much better, they tend to favor them.
RJF