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Name: Unknown
Status: N/A
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: Around 1993
Question:
Please identify Bairstow of "Bairstow's Algorithm." I would appreciate a reference so that I can find "Bairstow's Algorithm." Any other information will be greatly appreciated.


Replies:
I am guessing you refer to a method of finding the coefficients p and q in the polynomial x^2+px+q whose rootsare also roots of another polynomial. The man was LeonardBairstow, born in 1880. His field was aerodynamics, and heworked with the British government in that capacity, duringWorld War I and thereafter. He wrote a book entitled "AppliedAerodynamics" (1920) in the appendix of which is a descriptionof the algorithm that bears his name. Two modern referencesthat take slightly different approaches to the method: "Numerical Recipes" by Press et al., Cambridge Univ. Press (includes a Fortran program of the method) and "Ecyclopedic Dictionary of Mathematics" by the Mathematical Society of Japan, MIT Press (gives the algorithm).

Ron Winther


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