NATURAL SCIENCES
Reproduced with permission from NeXT
Computer, Inc.
A Reference
Guide to NeXT in Higher Education, Fall 1992
ยช
1992 NeXT Computer, Inc
Traditionally, scientists have that no single platform is
adequate for all phases of work. Personal computers, for
example, are well suited for creating reports and
maintaining records, but are underpowered for research and
analysis. As a result, scientists were forced to either use
their computers for things they were not designed or to use
more than one computer to complete their work.
NeXT technology, however, enables scientists to perform all
stages of work on a single machine-the only platform that
offers scientists the affordable cost and accessibility of
a personal computer combined with the powerful
computational environment of a workstation.
That's why many Ivy League schools, top liberal arts
colleges, and large statewide institutions-schools like
Duke University, Davidson College, Georgia Institute of
Technology, University of Washington, and Stanford-are
opting to use NeXT technology in the sciences. NeXTSTEP is
the only software environment to seamlessly integrate both
scientific and productivity tools needed in the classroom
and laboratory-tools like Mathematica; the TEX document
processing environment (including TeXView); Objective C, C,
and C++ language compilers; and GNU Emacs. These tools run
seamlessly alongside applications like WordPerfect and
Lotus Improv.
Using NeXT computers, scientists have found a way to not
only quickly produce answers to ad hoc queries that are
cumbersome on other workstation platforms, but to solve
computationally intensive problems with powerful
applications like Zilla, Mathematica, or Maple V. Plus,
since NeXTSTEP supports a variety of languages, including
Pascal, Common Lisp, Fortran, and Scheme, scientists can
easily port their software from larger computers to their
NeXT machines.
NeXT computers have become an integral part of the
scientific discovery process. And if the number of
NeXT-based scientific projects underway at colleges and
universities today is any indication, it looks like the
NeXTSTEP will become an even more important tool for
scientists in the years to come.