Wolfram

Wolfram refers to the brand and products developed by Wolfram Research, a technology company founded by Stephen Wolfram in 1987. The name is associated with a family of computational software and knowledge-engineering tools that aim to model, compute, and present information in a computable form. The term also echoes the historical name of the chemical element tungsten (Wolfram in German), a nod sometimes noted in discussions of the brand.

Wolfram Research is best known for its flagship software, Mathematica, first released in 1988. Mathematica is a comprehensive computational platform that blends numerical computation, symbolic algebra, data visualization, and interactive notebooks. It has evolved into a broad ecosystem that encompasses the Wolfram Language, a knowledge-based programming language designed to integrate algorithms, data, and natural language inputs into computable workflows.

Wolfram Alpha, launched in 2009, is a separate product line within the Wolfram umbrella. It is a computational knowledge engine that answers questions by interpreting natural language queries and generating results from curated data and algorithms. Over time, Wolfram Alpha has been integrated into various platforms and products, including mobile apps and web services, and has been used to power search results and educational tools.

Beyond Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha, Wolfram Research offers a range of cloud-based and desktop tools, such as Wolfram Cloud and Wolfram|One, which aim to provide access to the Wolfram Language and computational resources across devices. The company markets these tools to researchers, educators, developers, and professionals in science, engineering, finance, and data science.

Overall, Wolfram denotes a suite of technologies centered on computable knowledge, symbolic and numerical computation, and data-driven programming.