| .. _chapter-history: |
| |
| ======= |
| History |
| ======= |
| |
| Ceres Solver grew out of the need for general least squares solving at |
| Google. In early 2010, Sameer Agarwal and Fredrik Schaffalitzky |
| started the development of Ceres Solver. Fredrik left Google shortly |
| thereafter and Keir Mierle stepped in to take his place. After two |
| years of on-and-off development, Ceres Solver was released as open |
| source in May of 2012. |
| |
| Origin of the name |
| ------------------ |
| |
| While there is some debate as to who invented the method of Least |
| Squares [Stigler]_, there is no debate that it was `Carl Friedrich |
| Gauss |
| <http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Gauss.html>`_ |
| who brought it to the attention of the world. Using just 22 |
| observations of the newly discovered asteroid `Ceres |
| <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(dwarf_planet)>`_, Gauss used the |
| method of least squares to correctly predict when and where the |
| asteroid will emerge from behind the Sun [TenenbaumDirector]_. We |
| named our solver after Ceres to celebrate this seminal event in the |
| history of astronomy, statistics and optimization. |
