Computer Science
- January – The Google web search engine originates as "BackRub", a research project using PageRank by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, PhD students at Stanford University, California.
- January 23 – The first version of the Java programming language is released.
- February 10 – Deep Blue defeats chess grand-master Garry Kasparov for the first time.
- Lov Grover, at Bell Labs, publishes the quantum database search algorithm.
- IRCnet is founded.
Read more about this topic: 1996 In Science
Famous quotes containing the words computer and/or science:
“The computer takes up where psychoanalysis left off. It takes the ideas of a decentered self and makes it more concrete by modeling mind as a multiprocessing machine.”
—Sherry Turkle (b. 1948)
“Imagination could hardly do without metaphor, for imagination is, literally, the moving around in one’s mind of images, and such images tend commonly to be metaphoric. Creative minds, as we know, are rich in images and metaphors, and this is true in science and art alike. The difference between scientist and artist has little to do with the ways of the creative imagination; everything to do with the manner of demonstration and verification of what has been seen or imagined.”
—Robert A. Nisbet (b. 1913)