Although first proposed in 1956,[27] the term "computer science" appears in a 1959 article

in Communications of the ACM,[41] in which Louis Fein argues for the creation of a Graduate School
in Computer Sciences analogous to the creation of Harvard Business School in 1921,[42] justifying the
name by arguing that, like management science, the subject is applied and interdisciplinary in
nature, while having the characteristics typical of an academic discipline. [41] His efforts, and those of
others such as numerical analyst George Forsythe, were rewarded: universities went on to create
such departments, starting with Purdue in 1962. [43] Despite its name, a significant amount of
computer science does not involve the study of computers themselves. Because of this, several
alternative names have been proposed.[44] Certain departments of major universities prefer the
term computing science, to emphasize precisely that difference. Danish scientist Peter
Naur suggested the term datalogy,[45] to reflect the fact that the scientific discipline revolves around
data and data treatment, while not necessarily involving computers. The first scientific institution to
use the term was the Department of Datalogy at the University of Copenhagen, founded in 1969,
with Peter Naur being the first professor in datalogy. The term is used mainly in the Scandinavian
countries. An alternative term, also proposed by Naur, is data science; this is now used for a multi-
disciplinary field of data analysis, including statistics and databases.
In the early days of computing, a number of terms for the practitioners of the field of computing were
suggested in the Communications of the ACM—turingineer, turologist, flow-charts-man, applied
meta-mathematician, and applied epistemologist.[46] Three months later in the same
journal, comptologist was suggested, followed next year by hypologist.[47] The term computics has
also been suggested.[48] In Europe, terms derived from contracted translations of the expression
"automatic information" (e.g. "informazione automatica" in Italian) or "information and mathematics"
are often used, e.g. informatique (French), Informatik (German), informatica (Italian,
Dutch), informática (Spanish, Portuguese), informatika (Slavic languages and Hungarian)
or pliroforiki (πληροφορική, which means informatics) in Greek. Similar words have also been
adopted in the UK (as in the School of Informatics of the University of Edinburgh).[49] "In the U.S.,
however, informatics is linked with applied computing, or computing in the context of another
domain."[50]
A folkloric quotation, often attributed to—but almost certainly not first formulated by—Edsger
Dijkstra, states that "computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about
telescopes."[note 3] The design and deployment of computers and computer systems is generally
considered the province of disciplines other than computer science. For example, the study of
computer hardware is usually considered part of computer engineering, while the study of
commercial computer systems and their deployment is often called information technology
or information systems. However, there has been much cross-fertilization of ideas between the
various computer-related disciplines. Computer science research also often intersects other
disciplines, such as philosophy, cognitive science, linguistics, mathematics, physics, biology, Earth
science, statistics, and logic.
Computer science is considered by some to have a much closer relationship with mathematics than
many scientific disciplines, with some observers saying that computing is a mathematical science.
[5]
 Early computer science was strongly influenced by the work of mathematicians such as Kurt
Gödel, Alan Turing, John von Neumann, Rózsa Péter and Alonzo Church and there continues to be
a useful interchange of ideas between the two fields in areas such as mathematical logic, category
theory, domain theory, and algebra.[27]
The relationship between Computer Science and Software Engineering is a contentious issue, which
is further muddied by disputes over what the term "Software Engineering" means, and how computer
science is defined.[51] David Parnas, taking a cue from the relationship between other engineering
and science disciplines, has claimed that the principal focus of computer science is studying the
properties of computation in general, while the principal focus of software engineering is the design
of specific computations to achieve practical goals, making the two separate but complementary
disciplines.[52]
The academic, political, and funding aspects of computer science tend to depend on whether a
department formed with a mathematical emphasis or with an engineering emphasis. Computer
science departments with a mathematics emphasis and with a numerical orientation consider
alignment with computational science. Both types of departments tend to make efforts to bridge the
field educationally if not across all research.

Philosophy[edit]
Main article: Philosophy of computer science
A number of computer scientists have argued for the distinction of three separate paradigms in
computer science. Peter Wegner argued that those paradigms are science, technology, and
mathematics.[53] Peter Denning's working group argued that they are theory, abstraction (modeling),
and design.[54] Amnon H. Eden described them as the "rationalist paradigm" (which treats computer
science as a branch of mathematics, which is prevalent in theoretical computer science, and mainly
employs deductive reasoning), the "technocratic paradigm" (which might be found in engineering
approaches, most prominently in software engineering), and the "scientific paradigm" (which
approaches computer-related artifacts from the empirical perspective of natural sciences, identifiable
in some branches of artificial intelligence).[55] Computer science focuses on methods involved in
design, specification, programming, verification, implementation and testing of human-made
computing systems.[56]

Fields[edit]
Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.

— Edsger Dijkstra
Further information: Outline of computer science
As a discipline, computer science spans a range of topics from theoretical studies of algorithms and
the limits of computation to the practical issues of implementing computing systems in hardware and
software.[57][58] CSAB, formerly called Computing Sciences Accreditation Board—which is made up of
representatives of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the IEEE Computer
Society (IEEE CS)[59]—identifies four areas that it considers crucial to the discipline of computer
science: theory of computation, algorithms and data structures, programming methodology and
languages, and computer elements and architecture. In addition to these four areas, CSAB also
identifies fields such as software engineering, artificial intelligence, computer networking and
communication, database systems, parallel computation, distributed computation, human–computer
interaction, computer graphics, operating systems, and numerical and symbolic computation as
being important areas of computer science.[57]

Theoretical computer science[edit]

Main article: Theoretical computer science
Theoretical Computer Science is mathematical and abstract in spirit, but it derives its motivation from
the practical and everyday computation. Its aim is to understand the nature of computation and, as
a consequence of this understanding, provide more efficient methodologies. All studies related to
mathematical, logic and formal concepts and methods could be considered as theoretical computer
science, provided that the motivation is clearly drawn from the field of computing.
Theory of computation[edit]
Main article: Theory of computation
According to Peter Denning, the fundamental question underlying computer science is, "What can be
automated?"[5] Theory of computation is focused on answering fundamental questions about what
can be computed and what amount of resources are required to perform those computations. In an
effort to answer the first question, computability theory examines which computational problems are
solvable on various theoretical models of computation. The second question is addressed
by computational complexity theory, which studies the time and space costs associated with different
approaches to solving a multitude of computational problems.
The famous P = NP? problem, one of the Millennium Prize Problems,[60] is an open problem in the
theory of computation.

Automata theory Computability theory Computational complexity theory

GNITIRW-TERCES

Cryptography Quantum computing theory Digital circuit theory

Information and coding theory[edit]
Main articles: Information theory and Coding theory
Information theory, closely related to probability and statistics, is related to the quantification of
information. This was developed by Claude Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal
processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and communicating data.
[61]
 Coding theory is the study of the properties of codes (systems for converting information from one
form to another) and their fitness for a specific application. Codes are used for data
compression, cryptography, error detection and correction, and more recently also for network
coding. Codes are studied for the purpose of designing efficient and reliable data
transmission methods. [