The Genesis of Simulation in Dynamics: Pursuing the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam Problem

We hear a lot about dynamical systems theory these days-"chaos dy­ namics" is the popular idiom-but very little of this abstract discipline is taught in undergraduate or even in graduate school, unless that happens to be one's own field. People may have heard some of the terms, but they may not understand what a dynamicist does. Just what does a dynamicist do? Although I've been through the training, I spend much more time talk­ ing and thinking about dynamics than actually doing it, which is a circum­ stance that affords me an interesting perspective. Some time after defending my dissertation, when I stopped back by my alma mater on a visit through Boulder, I ran into one of my advisors, a practicing dynamicist, and he was excited to show me his new workstation and its resident software. Hope­ fully, by relating what I experienced then, I may in part help to answer my opening question. He sat down in front of a very large screen, at least 19 inches across, so closely, that it filled his field of view completely. At his fingertips were the usual mouse and keyboard. He fired up the software and chose a model; I think we were out to explore "just the standard map. " As the program began, the screen remained black, except for a small blinking cursor at the middle.