1 .. _chapter-history: 2 3 ======= 4 History 5 ======= 6 7 Ceres Solver grew out of the need for general least squares solving at 8 Google. In early 2010, Sameer Agarwal and Fredrik Schaffalitzky 9 started the development of Ceres Solver. Fredrik left Google shortly 10 thereafter and Keir Mierle stepped in to take his place. After two 11 years of on-and-off development, Ceres Solver was released as open 12 source in May of 2012. 13 14 Origin of the name 15 ------------------ 16 17 While there is some debate as to who invented the method of Least 18 Squares [Stigler]_, there is no debate that it was `Carl Friedrich 19 Gauss 20 <http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Gauss.html>`_ 21 who brought it to the attention of the world. Using just 22 22 observations of the newly discovered asteroid `Ceres 23 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(dwarf_planet)>`_, Gauss used the 24 method of least squares to correctly predict when and where the 25 asteroid will emerge from behind the Sun [TenenbaumDirector]_. We 26 named our solver after Ceres to celebrate this seminal event in the 27 history of astronomy, statistics and optimization. 28
