Acknowledgements

Numeric Python has been in many ways a product of the matrix-sig, a special interest mailing list devoted to designing the ultimate numeric extension to the Python programming language. Jim Hugunin, then a graduate student at MIT, did the original implementation. In 1998, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory agreed to take over the maintenance and distribution. They started from Hugunin's version as modified by Konrad Hinsen to improve the portability of the packages as dynamically-loadable modules. David Ascher, Harri Pasanen, and Konrad Hinsen have helped LLNL in making the package available under Windows and by supplying the automatic compilation technology.

Here are the original acknowledgements from Hugunin, before he was seduced by the Dark Side of the Java:

• Jim Fulton deserves special mention as the one who created the matrix-sig, and the first pass at a Python object to hold multidimensional Numeric arrays.
• Konrad Hinsen can be blamed for the fact that NumPy-beta1 is being released about one year later than I'd intended. On the other hand, he's the one to thank for much of the power and generality that wouldn't have made it into the system without his efforts (and occasional code donations).
• David Ascher wrote the current excellent tutorial for NumPy. His work made it possible for me to release this to a larger audience.
• Paul Dubois has shared his wealth of experience with designing and using numerical languages, as well as provided me with frequent encouragement to see this project through.
• Tom Schwaller wrote the first significant extensions to NumPy (other than myself) and working with him early on helped to get the bugs out of both the design and implementation of the C interface.
• Doug Heisterkamp created an interface to the LAPACK library of linear algebra functions, demonstrating that I was right all along in claiming that this system could be used to "easily" create interfaces to major existing numeric libraries.
• Chris Chase wrote the code to add fancier slices and dictionary indexing to Python 1.5. This greatly improved the syntax for complicated indexing of multidimensional arrays.

• The Python Software Activity has supported the matrix-sig mailing list without which this project would have been a lot less successful and a lot less fun.

• Guido van Rossum, our beloved benevolent dictator, created this excellent language in the first place, and has done a wonderful job of allowing it to grow in power and capability over the years without losing its inherent simplicity and elegance. (Though I still hope to one day convince him that "a < b" can usefully return values other than 0 or 1).
• I’d also like to thank the following people for assorted bug reports, example code, and design advice:
• Tser-Yuan Ya
• Dong Gweon Oh
• Perry Stoll
• Rod Hooft
• And many others (who I hope to add soon)…