(This was taken from the net) From: jov@styx.ornl.gov (Judd Jones) In what follows, please forgive typos. First, the facts. I have several documents which bear on this question: --- 1 --- "A Research and Development Strategy for High Performance Computing" Executive Office of the President Office of Science and Technology Policy November 20, 1987 [[ It is not obvious from this document how to get reprints ]] [[ Page 3 of this report contains the following text: ]] "A _grand_challenge_ is a fundamental problem in science or engineering, with broad applications, whose solution would be enabled by the application of high performance computing resources that could become available in the near future. Examples of grand challenges are: (1) Computational fluid dynamics for the design of hypersonic aircraft, efficient automobile bodies, and extremely quiet submarines, for weather forecasting for short and long term effects, efficient recovery of oil, and for many other applications; (2) Electronic structure calculations for the design of new materials such as chemical catalysts, immunological agents, and superconductors; (3) Plasma dynamics for fusion energy technology and for safe and efficient military technology; (4) Calculations to understand the fundamental nature of matter, including quantum chromodynamics and condensed matter theory; (5) Symbolic computations including speech recognition, computer vision, natural language understanding, automated reasoning, and tools for design, manufacturing, and simulation of complex systems." In a section called "Background" this report mentions several earlier documents including two 1983 FCCSET reports to congress and one 1985 Whate House Science Council report. I don't have copies of these, so I don't know whether or not they use the phrase "grand challenges". --- 2 --- "The Federal High Performance Computing Program" Executive Office of the President Office of Science and Technology Policy September 8, 1989 This is a program plan for the HPCC. It is not obvious from this document how to get reprints. In any case, on pages 49 and 50, Appendix A contains "Summary of Grand Challenges for which solution is likely to be possible using systems developed under this initiative." There follows a list of problems, a short 1 paragraph description of each, and the federal agencies responsible for each. They are as follows: Grand Challenge Problem - Responsible Agencies ------------------------------------------------------------------------- prediction of weather, climate, and global change - doe,dod,nasa,nsf,noaa challenges in materials sciences - dod,doe,nsf,nasa semiconductor design - dod,doe,nsf superconductivity - doe,nsf,dod structural biology - doe,hhs,nsf design of drugs - doe,hhs,nsf human genome - doe,hhs,nsf quantum chromodynamics - doe,nsf astronomy - nasa,nsf challenges in transportation - nasa,dod,doe,nsf,dot vehicle signature - nasa,dod turbulence - nasa,dod,doe,nsf,noaa vehicle dynamics - nasa,dod,dot nuclear fusion - doe,nasa,dod efficiency of combustion systems - doe,nasa,dod enhanced oil and gas recovery - doe computational ocean sciences - dod,nasa,nsf,noaa speech - nasa,dod,nsf vision - nsf,darpa,nasa undersea surveillance for ASW - dod --- 3 --- Grand Challenges 1993: High Performance Computing and Communications The FY 1993 U.S. Reseach and Development Program A Report by the Committee on Physical, Mathematical, and Engineering Sciences Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering, and Technology Office of Science and Technology Policy Section 4 of this document is titled "Grand Challenge and Supporting Technology Case Studies" which gives examples "chosen to illustrate the diversity and significance of application areas addressed to date." There follows 12 two-page sections, each with three or four paragraphs of text and a beautiful full-color photo illustrating: Magnetic recording technology, rational drug design, high speed civil transports, catalysis, fuel combustion, ocean modeling, ozone depletion, digital anatomy, air pollution, design of protein structures, venus imaging, and "technology links research to education". To obtain a copy of this document - send a request to Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering and Technology Committee on Physical, Mathematical, and Engineering Sciences c/o National Science Foundation Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate 1800 G Street N.W. Washington, DC 20550 The membership of the OSTP FCCSET Commitee is given in reference 3 above. Presumably these people, at least, think these problems are important. Now, the opinion. The 1987 OSTP report appears to define grand challenge problems. The 1989 OTSP report appears to give a comprehensive list of the grand challenge problems. However, the 1992 program plan covers results in areas such as digital anatomy and venus imaging, which do not appear to fit anywhere within the 1989 list. (Note: the text appearing with "structural biology" in the 1989 report defines it narrowly as molecular modelling, which does not include digital anatomy.) This leads me to think that there was an officially recognized list of grand challenge problems at one time, but that it has changed somewhat since 1989 (albeit slowly). Since these are supposed to be problems of national importance, and the nation's needs change over time (albeit slowly) this seems, to me at least, to be rational. The 1989 OSTP report is probably as good a place as any to start. Unfortunately, in all of the documents the discussion is quite vague.