BIT 38:1 (1998), 217-218 SCIENTIFIC NOTES AN ERROR PROPAGATION IN THE NUMERICAL LITERATURE* DIETER BRITZ Kemisk Institut, Aarhus Universitet, DK-8000 J[rhus C, Denmark emaih dbOkemi.aau.dk Abstract. An important historical paper on the numerical solution of pde's has regularly, but incorrectly, been assigned to the year 1951. The origin of this error of reference is discussed. AMS subject classification: 35-00. Key words: Numerical solution of pde's. 1 An error of reference. In 1950, there appeared a paper by O'Brien et al [1]. In it, the authors show among several other things, for the first time, how to use the yon Neumann (Fourier) stability analysis of schemes for the numerical solution of pde's, they prove that the Richardson scheme [6] is unconditionally unstable and they sug- gest the fully implicit stable backward difference scheme. The paper has been regularly cited, mainly for these three themes. In 1951, Leutert [3] cited this pa- per in the same journal but incorrectly assigned the year 1951 to it. This appears to be the origin of the error most citations have made since then, probably helped by the fact that the journal does not print any information on its pages, that is, journal name, volume or year; so that if one obtains a copy of such a paper, one does not get this information. It appears that most authors have simply followed Leutert. Interestingly, this includes two of the original three authors themselves: O'Brien [4] and Hyman [2]. Patter [5], referring inaccurately to ref. [1], explicitly writes "in 1951 M.A. Hyman, S. Kaplan and G.G. O'Brien discussed [... ]. In the same year, W. Leutert ... ". A sampling of some textbooks on the numerical solution of (partial) differential equations shows that most of them repeat the error. Space does not permit citing them fully, but they are familiar: Collatz, Jain, Forsythe & Wasow, Richtmyer & Morton, Smith (all 3 editions). A search through the Science Citation Index from 1961 to the present produced 99 ref- erences and a further 8 papers from 1951-1962 were found elsewhere. Out of *Received June 1997. Communicated by Ake BjSrck