Editing GNU Scientific Library (section)

== Project history ==
The GSL project was initiated in 1996 by physicists Mark Galassi and James Theiler of [[Los Alamos National Laboratory]].<ref name="GSL homepage">[https://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/ GSL homepage].</ref> They aimed at writing a modern replacement for widely used but somewhat outdated [[Fortran]] libraries such as [[Netlib]].<ref>[https://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/design/gsl-design.html#SEC1 GSL design document].</ref> They carried out the overall design and wrote early modules; with that ready they recruited other scientists to contribute.

The "overall development of the library and the design and implementation of the major modules" was carried out by [[Brian Gough]] and Gerard Jungman.<ref name="GSL homepage"/> Other major contributors were [[Jim Davies (cognitive scientist)|Jim Davies]], Reid Priedhorsky, M. Booth, and F. Rossi.<ref name="GSL homepage"/>

Version 1.0 was released in 2001. In the following years, the library expanded only slowly; as the documentation stated, the maintainers were more interested in stability than in additional functionality. Major version 1 ended with release 1.16 of July 2013; this was the only public activity in the three years 2012–2014.

Vigorous development resumed with publication of version 2.0 in October 2015, which included user contributed patches. The latest version 2.8 was released in May 2024.