Monte Carlo method

A 2014 paper recounts how Los Alamos scientists turned ENIAC, one of the first electronic computers, to Monte Carlo simulations of nuclear weapons between 1947 and 1948. The work helped establish probabilistic computer modelling as a core method in physics and engineering. Readers are sharing the paper as a classic piece of early computing history.

A newly circulated paper recounts how Los Alamos scientists turned to the Eniac in 1947–1948 to run some of the earliest Monte Carlo simulations, using the pioneering computer to model nuclear processes through random sampling. The episode is widely seen as a founding moment of computational science, showing how wartime computing hardware was repurposed for peacetime physics research and helped establish a technique now used across finance, engineering and beyond.