Short for Matrix Laboratory, Matlab is a numerical computing and visualization software package, as well as a fourth-generation programming language, published by MathWorks. It performs matrix manipulations, function plotting, algorithmimplementation, and many high-level mathematical operations. Its companion package, Simulink, is used for graphical multi-domain simulation.
Matlab was originally written in the late 1970s by Cleve Moler, the chairman of the computer science department at the University of New Mexico, to give his students a way to use linear algebra and matrix computation packages without having to learn FORTRAN. Today, it is utilized mainly by engineers and students of linear algebra, with over a million users worldwide.