Cleve Moler, the visionary mathematician who revolutionized the way the world interacts with computers, died on May 20 at his home in Saint Michaels, Maryland. He was 86. According to his daughter, Kathryn Moler, his passing was the result of Parkinson’s disease.
During the 1970s and ’80s, Dr. Moler developed essential tools that allowed researchers to perform complex calculations without the need to master intricate underlying code. This breakthrough democratized high-level computing, accelerating advancements in diverse sectors including medical imaging, automotive design, and global finance.
In the early 1970s, a significant gap existed between theoretical computing power and practical application. While engineers and biomedical researchers faced quantitative problems too vast for manual calculation, utilizing computers required an exhaustive knowledge of FORTRAN and grueling hours of manual coding.
Dr. Moler became a pivotal figure in bridging this divide. He was instrumental in creating EISPACK and LINPACK, two FORTRAN libraries that offered standardized shortcuts for complex mathematical operations. However, the physical process remained cumbersome; researchers still relied on punch cards, meaning a single coding error could waste an entire day of processing time.
While teaching at the University of New Mexico, Dr. Moler sought a more efficient way for his students to interact with technology. In the late 1970s, he developed MATLAB, an interface that functioned as a sophisticated “super-calculator.” It allowed users to process massive datasets directly and rapidly, bypassing the need for pre-programmed calculations and punch cards.
Though initially intended as a pedagogical tool, MATLAB’s utility quickly gained global recognition. With the rise of the personal computer, MATLAB provided the key for engineers to unlock the full potential of their hardware.
“I was lucky in that the things that I was personally interested in were useful to other people,” Moler once told Scientific Computing World. “I didn’t invent MATLAB to be used by a lot of other people. I put things into MATLAB that I found useful, and other people have also found them useful.”
In 1984, Dr. Moler co-founded MathWorks with electrical engineer Jack Little. Serving as the company’s chief mathematician, he helped grow the organization into a global powerhouse. Today, MathWorks employs 6,500 people and generates approximately $1.5 billion in annual revenue, with MATLAB used by millions of professionals worldwide.
Thomas Haigh, a professor of computing history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, noted that while Moler may not have focused on inventing new methods of numerical analysis, his greatest contribution was ensuring those methods became accessible and widely used.
Born on August 19, 1939, in Salt Lake City to journalists Murray and Eleanor Moler, Cleve Moler began his studies at Caltech in 1957. His academic journey coincided with the Space Race; the launch of Sputnik sparked a surge of U.S. funding for engineering and computer research, a wave that supported his early career.
After earning his mathematics degree from Caltech in 1961, he completed his PhD at Stanford University in 1965. In 1967, he co-authored “Computer Solution of Linear Algebraic Systems” with his adviser George Forsythe, a text that remains a foundational classic in computer science. He later held faculty positions at the University of Michigan and the University of New Mexico.
Dr. Moler is survived by his wife, Patsy Wiser; his daughters, Kathryn, Teresa, and Antonia; stepdaughters Carolyn Lupton Franco and Byerly Cline; sisters Martha and Elizabeth Moler; and two grandchildren.
While his work remained largely behind the scenes of modern technology, a small piece of his legacy appeared in popular culture. In the original 1979 “Star Trek” film, producers used a matrix computation designed by Dr. Moler for the graphics seen on Mr. Spock’s console as the Enterprise entered a nebula.