From finite differences to finite elements. A short history of numerical analysis of partial differential equations (Q5931470)

This paper gives a historical account of the development of the theory of numerical methods for partial differential equations. The emphasis is on stability theorems and error bounds for finite difference and finite element methods for linear problems, but there are also references to the literature for work on other methods, such as collocation and boundary element methods. The paper closes with a short review of work on the developments in linear algebra for solving the matrix equations arising from the discretization of elliptic partial differential equations.