MATLAB started as a simple “Matrix Laboratory.”
Cleve Moler was one of the founders; J. H. Wilkinson, George Forsythe, and John Todd, played important roles in the origins of MATLAB.
Here is a link to “Cleve’s Corner” with an account beginning more than 50 years ago:
http://www.mathworks.com/company/newsletters/news_notes/clevescorner/dec04.html?s_cid=wiki_matlab_3
Octave solves ordinary differential equations using “lsode” named after the Livermore Labs. Here is some history
https://computation.llnl.gov/casc/odepack/odepack_home.html
http://history.siam.org/oralhistories/hindmarsh.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Livermore_National_Laboratory
accessed Sept.13, 2012
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)… is self-described as “a premier research and development institution for science and technology applied to national security” … LLNL is also one of three laboratories in the United States where classified work on the science and engineering design of nuclear weapons is undertaken… LLNL was established in 1952 as the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at Livermore as an offshoot of the existing University of California Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley. It was intended to spur innovation and provide competition to the nuclear weapon design laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico, home of the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic weapons. Edward Teller and Ernest O. Lawrence, director of the Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley, are regarded as the co-founders of the Livermore Laboratory…. From its inception, Livermore focused on innovative weapon design concepts… During the decades of the Cold War, scores of Livermore-designed warheads entered the nation’s nuclear stockpile…. Throughout its history, LLNL has been a leader in computers and scientific computing. Even before the Livermore Lab opened its doors, E.O. Lawrence and Edward Teller recognized the importance of computing and the potential of computational simulation. Their purchase of one of the first UNIVAC computers, set the precedent for LLNL’s history of acquiring and exploiting the fastest and most capable supercomputers in the world… The Livermore Action Group organized many mass protests, from 1981 to 1984, against nuclear weapons which were being produced by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory…. On June 22, 1982, more than 1,300 anti-nuclear protesters were arrested in a nonviolent demonstration. More recently, there has been an annual protest against nuclear weapons research at Lawrence Livermore. In the 2007 protest, 64 people were arrested. More than 80 people were arrested in March 2008 while protesting at the gates.