I am preparing a lecture course on the applications of operator theory where I intended to make some numerical analysis application. I was wondering about this question while browsing the literature I can access.


[Lax and Richtmyer](http://www.mathe.tu-freiberg.de/~ernst/Lehre/IVP/Literatur/laxRichtmyer1956.pdf) (1955) start with a vague reference to [Courant, Friedrichs, and Lewy](http://www.digizeitschriften.de/dms/img/?PPN=GDZPPN002272636) (1928).


[Trotter](http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.pjm/1103039709) (1958) on the other hand refers to von Neumann, without any specific reference.


Since I have no deeper background in numerical analysis, I might be missing some obvious point. So can someone tell me (with a reference) who introduced the notion of stability in numerical analysis?



Who introduced the notion of "stability" in numerical analysis?
John von Neumann is credited as having pioneered the stability analysis of finite difference schemes. Crank and Nicholson [1] acknowledge Von Neumann when they demonstrate the stability of their scheme in 1947, and a few years later the method was applied in a meteorological context in a paper co-authored by Von Neumann [2]. That 1950 paper introduces the stability analysis as being "patterned after the rigorous method of Courant, Friedrichs, and Lewy."


[1] J. Crank and P. Nicolson, Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. 43, 50–67 (1947).


[2] J.G. Charney, R. Fjörtoft, and J. von Neumann, Tellus 2, 237-254 (1950). Online at
<http://mathsci.ucd.ie/~plynch/eniac/CFvN-1950.pdf>


Further reading:


<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_stability_analysis>


