Cleve Moler (born 1939) is an American mathematician and computer scientist who created MATLAB and co-founded MathWorks. His work made numerical computing accessible to engineers and scientists without requiring expertise in programming languages like Fortran.
Early Career
Moler was a professor at the University of Michigan and Stanford. He co-authored LINPACK and EISPACK, the standard Fortran libraries for linear algebra that became the foundation for MATLAB.
Creating MATLAB
In the late 1970s, Moler created MATLAB as a teaching tool so students could use LINPACK and EISPACK without learning Fortran. The interactive, matrix-oriented syntax made numerical computation accessible.
MathWorks
In 1984, Moler co-founded MathWorks with Jack Little to commercialize MATLAB. The company grew MATLAB into a comprehensive platform for:
- Numerical analysis
- Algorithm development
- Data visualization
- Simulation (Simulink)
Technical Contributions
Beyond MATLAB, Moler contributed to:
- LINPACK (linear algebra)
- EISPACK (eigenvalue computation)
- Numerical analysis theory
- Education in computational mathematics
Recognition
Moler received the IEEE Computer Pioneer Award and the SIAM Prize for Distinguished Service to the Profession. He remains chairman of MathWorks.
Legacy
MATLAB transformed how engineers and scientists work with numerical data. Its influence extends to NumPy, Julia, and other modern scientific computing tools that adopted its matrix-oriented approach.