CPC’s 50th Anniversary: Celebrating 50 years of open-source software in computational physics

Abstract

To celebrate the leading role Computer Physics Communications (CPC) has played in publishing open-source software in computational physics for over 50 years the editors are delighted to announce this Virtual Special Issue.Since 2018, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the start of the CPC venture, thirty-two invited articles have been published. Each has been peer reviewed and each bears the header ‘CPC 50th anniversary article’. The special issue is in keeping with CPC’s ethos: it is focused on computational physics software and is accompanied by twenty-five software systems.The introduction to the collection also includes a personal reflection on Phil Burke, CPC’s founder, by Alan Hibbert, a lifelong colleague, who joined Queen’s University with Phil in the autumn of 1967.The distinctive feature of CPC is its Program Library which houses and distributes over 3500 open-source programs in computational physics. The introduction concludes with a description of key events in the history of the Program Library, its association with Queen’s University Belfast and its transfer to Elsevier’s Mendeley Data repository.