The postwar period

In Germany, Konrad Zuse had in 1935, as we know today, shown informatics the way. In the miserable circumstances of the war, his attempts remained in the first instance without success. After the war, they were doubly obsolete: Electronic vacuum tubes superseded relays, and the concept of stored program universal computers strangled the loop control Zuse had used. Thus, some interested mathematicians and physicists became oriented toward the U.S.A., such as Alwin Walther in Darmstadt and Ludwig Biermann in Gšttingen. Fr. A. Willers and N. Joachim Lehmann in Dresden did not find similar support in Russia. In Zurich, too, where the Zuse Z4, which was saved from destruction, was put to work, Eduard Stiefel, Ambros Speiser and Heinz Rutishauser turned toward Princeton. In Munich, a cooperation between the communications engineer Hans Piloty and the mathematician Robert Sauer took place. Everywhere, people had to to build machines before they could use them. The machines constructed in Gšttingen with the substantial participation of Heinz Billing and in Munich with the substantial participation of Hans Piloty were successes, which built the basis for developing a programming methodology. Still, in the beginning, one was happy if the machines worked at all, and some design criteria were subordinated in a ridiculous way to aspects of reliability. But soon it turned out that it was more difficult to produce a flawless program. Programming support programs came into use; following the example given by the EDSAC of Maurice Wilkes, the machine itself was used for the production of machine programs. Next to numerical information processing, which had triggered the development, interest was directed more and more toward nonnumerical tasks. This led to an abundance of algebraic, combinatorial, and formal-logical problems. First attempts to create a theory of formal languages turned up.

In Munich, Friedrich L. Bauer and Klaus Samelson, taking up the translation of algebraic formulas in machine code Heinz Rutishauser in Zürich had treated, found in 1955 the stack principle (Kellerprinzip)

for the processing of symbol strings, which soon turned out to be a suitable tool for the translation of a wide class of formal languages, namely those with a bracket structure. Friedrich L. Bauer and Samelson aimed at international cooperation: with Zurich, where Heinz Rutishauser in 1951 had studied the translation of bracketed expressions and meanwhile had invented an organization scheme for handling automatic storage allocation for subroutines, which later was extended by Samelson to the principle of block structure; with Novosibirsk, where A. A. Lyapunov and Andrej Ershov had discovered the operator structure of programs; with Amsterdam, where E. W. Dijkstra studied how recursion should be treated; and with Stanford, where John McCarthy worked, who had introduced, together with Newell, the formation of composite objects with the help of address references, a field that had been studied in Munich by Heinz Schecher. Great attention was given in Munich to the problem of parameterization of programs studied by Alan Perlis in Pittsburgh and by Heinz Rutishauser. The different possibilities of "parameter transport" showed for the first time that the semantics of programming is not trivial.

Chances for informatics

All this was an indication that a new scientific discipline would originate, leaving open how independent it would become. The Darmstadt dissertation of 1958 by Bottenbruch on formula translation and the Munich dissertation by Seegmüller in 1966 on parameter transport mechanisms were formally under the flag of mathematics.

A great stimulus was given to the independence tendencies by the international ALGOL activity. The definition of a user-oriented and machine-independent programming language by an international working group focused attention on many problems in the germinating science of informatics. Around 1962 it looked in some places like a chance for informatics. When in this year Friedrich L. Bauer and in 1963 Samelson had been offered professorships in Munich, they agreed with Sauer to work for this build-up. They considered the most important preparation to be the formation of a staff of teachers and researchers. The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft was willing, to support this by research grants. In this way, Richard Baumann, Josef Stoer, Stefan Braun, Peter Deussen, Hans Langmaack, Manfred Paul, JürgenEickel, later also Gerhard Goos, Gerhard Seegmüller, and Peter Kandzia could prepare for a university career.

At other places in Germany such a build-up was tried, too. At the Technische Universität Berlin, in 1957, F. R. Güntsch had offered a class on "Programmierung digitaler Rechenanlagen". Now, at the Universität Bonn, in the summer term of 1967, Wilfried Brauer gave for the first time a class on "Algorithmen und formale Sprachen". The transition from mere programming instruction (in 1957) to the first genuine classes on the organization and programming of computers happened sooner or later everywhere computers could be found.

The introduction of the Studiengang Informationsverarbeitung

In Munich, we see the year 1967 as the year of birth of the academic discipline informatics, when in the winter term a Studiengang Informationsverarbeitung with a corresponding curriculum was presented. This was offered to first-year and second-year students as an alternative to the classical Diplom-Studiengängen mathematics with physics and mathematics with economy. Thus, TUM was the first German university offering a curriculum in informatics.

The neighbourhood

Starting 1964, the Leibniz-Rechenzentrum der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften was connected with the nucleus of informatics at TUM, and gave support to the Rechenzentrum der Technischen Hochschule operating the PERM computer.

The latter not only was used for exercises but also was the germ cell for the emergence of a group Technische Informatik headed by Heinz Schecher. It was not necessary to form a particular group Theoretische Informatik within a Fakultät für Mathematik und Informatik; however the readiness of colleagues dealing with numerical analysis, combinatorics, algebra, and geometry to orient themselves to the needs of informatics should be mentioned with appreciation.

Überregionales Forschungsprogramm Informatik

On April 26, 1967, a committee of the Federal Cabinet of Ministers passed the 1. Datenverarbeitungsprogramm der Bundesregierung. It provided for the years 1967-1971 grants of 230 million DM for research and development on technology and systems programming for computers. Although these funds were primarily destined for industry, science was successful in participating: "In Einzelfällen wird eine Beteiligung von Hochschulinstituten und ähnlichen Forschungseinrichtungen möglich sein. Dies gilt beispielsweise für Arbeiten auf dem Gebiet der Informations- und Automatentheorie, über Übersetzungsalgorithmen für formale Sprachen, Zeichen- und Bilderkennung, Sprach-Ein/Aus -gabe und über Linguistik und Übersetzer für natürliche Sprachen."

In 1969, a professional committee "Informatik", established by the president of the Kultusministerkonferenz, comprising on the side of science the professors Friedrich L. Bauer, Hotz, Piloty, and Zemanek, passed regulations for a master's degree in informatics (Rahmenordnung für die Diplomprüfung in Informatik). Meanwhile, the Federal Minister for Scientific Research had arranged for an ad hoc committee on a curriculum in informatics (Einführung von Informatik-Studiengängen), and disclosed on July 22, 1968 that the Federal Government was considering providing a special budget for a build-up of informatics ("die Einrichtung neuer Lehrstühle der Informatik und den Ausbau oder Neubau von Instituten"). For constitutional reasons, this could be arranged only in the form of supraregional activity (Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung von überregionaler Bedeutung). The ad hoc committee therefore designed a research program comprising eight research domains and aimed at starting studies in informatics at 12 to 15 universities (Überregionales Forschungsprogramm Informatik). Munich, of course, was among them.

Sonderforschungsbereich 49

In 1966, a research project "Elektronische Rechenanlagen und Informationsverarbeitung" at the Technische Universität München (TUM) was adopted by the German Research Council (Wissenschaftsrat) into its program (Schwerpunktskatalog), which was to become the basis for selective support of scientific research in German universities and was later transferred to the German Research Association (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) and its Sonderforschungsbereich program. Somewhat delayed for administrative reasons, the Sonderforschungsbereich started in 1971, incorporating the Leibniz-Rechenzentrum. It was the first and for a long time the only Sonderforschungsbereich for informatics. With its central theme Systemprogrammierung und Programmierungstechnik in the sense of software engineering, it became the connecting link between the activities of the Munich professors.

Informatics and the Mathematische Institut

Until 1975, the Mathematische Institut of the TUM offered the organizational frame for the build-up of informatics in Munich, where step by step six full professorships with their staff and budget were established. Only when the Bayerisches Hochschulgesetz of 1975 provided a new organizational structure for the TUM was the tight binding between mathematics and informatics formally relaxed. The Mathematische Institut was divided into an Institut für Mathematik} and an Institut für Informatik. Each of them had, as before, the character of a department without a substructure with respect to persons and professorships. Accordingly, there was no attachment of educational activities to persons or professorships; the old-fashioned concept "chair" could be dispensed with. Likewise, the scientific staff - irrespective of personal control of their scientific work - formed a pool for the educational activities of each term. The Fakultät für Mathematik was sometimes envied for this form of organization, and suitably developed it is still in operation today.

International and national relations and events

The TUM workers in informatics always placed a high value on international and national relations and events. In 1962, the IFIP held its second World Congress in Munich, and in 1985, the 25th Anniversary Celebration of IFIP took place at the TUM. Since 1970, there is regularly an International Summer School of high reputation in Marktoberdorf, funded by the NATO Science Committee. At a time when no commercial group provided for refresher courses for professional informaticians, advanced courses with international lecturers were held, backed by the OECD.

When in 1969 the Gesellschaft für Informatik was founded, Munich informaticians gave important impulses. The first Annual Meeting of the GI took place in 1971 in Munich; a number of further GI meetings followed.

The assistance of Munich informatics in founding a Munich computer fair SYSTEMS led to a connection of long standing with the Munich Messegesellschaft, culminating in a series of seminars and biannual GI congresses as parts of the SYSTEMS.

Seminars in informatics were from the beginning in 1984 an essential part of the Ferienakademien arranged jointly by the TUM and the university of Erlangen-Nürnberg in the Sarntal located in South Tyrol.

Further build-up

In 1982, a second development plan for informatics was presented to the Bavarian government (Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Unterricht und Kultus), comprising an increase of the number of chairs (full professors) from 7 to 10. In addition, a foundation chair was given by the Förderkreis "Neue Technologien" des Landesverbands der Bayerischen Industrie. In 1986, a third development plan for informatics was passed by the senate of the TUM and submitted to the Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Unterricht und Kultus. It aims at a final situation of 18 chairs. More than ever, reasons for this expansion are on the one side the needs of widespread resarch, on the other side the great number of students: the Studienrichtung informatics has developed into the thirdgreatest at the TUM.

Meanwhile, the research activities in informatics are amplified by a number of Sonderforschungsbereiche of the DFG and by cooperations with other universities %in the research compounds (SFB 331, SFB 342, FORWISS, FORTWIHR and FAST).

Thus, the step to a separate faculty (Fakultät für Informatik) in the year 1992 was only logical; it was suggested by the appearance of new technological fields and their applications which no longer made immediate contact with mathematics. The good relation with the Fakultät für Mathematik and with the other faculties, in particular the Fakultät für Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik did not suffer by this. On the contrary, an independent cooperation with other faculties became possible.

Intensive cooperation takes place with the informatics industry. This is reflected in a number of projects, starting with student projects in practical work and ending in voluminous research projects.

Forum Informatik

Contact with scientists and practitioners who use informatics more or less as a supplementary science, is furthered by the Forum Informatik founded in 1993. Next to cooperation in research and education, the aim is harmonization of infrastructure provisions.

Friedrich L. Bauer
Wilfried Brauer
Eike Jessen
Manfred Broy