Explorations in Unix
A quote: "... As if this wasn't enough, he [i.e.Tukey] also <i>invented</i> what is probably the most influential algorithm of all time." (emphasis added)<p>No, Tukey did not "invent" the FFT. He rediscovered it, as did a number of others over the years since -- who else? -- Gauss first created it.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Fourier_transform" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Fourier_transform</a><p>A quote: "This method (and the general idea of an FFT) was popularized by a publication of J. W. Cooley and J. W. Tukey in 1965,[2] but it was later discovered (Heideman & Burrus, 1984) that those two authors had independently re-invented an algorithm known to Carl Friedrich Gauss around 1805 (and subsequently rediscovered several times in limited forms)."