Summary: A session co-sponsored with DCOMP and DGRAV on the history of Numerical Relativity offered a very complete overview of the development of this field. Larry Smarr, one of the pioneers of the subject discussed its early history from the Chapel Hill conference of 1957 through to the 1980s. Then Ed Seidel described the period around the 1990s during which the community was organized into a grand challenge alliance and was engaged, as he put it, in developing tools to tackle the problem of modelling a binary black hole coalescence. Joan Centrella then discussed the breakthrough of 2005 when several groups began to have success in modelling such systems and the consequences of this breakthrough. A common feature of the talks was discussing how poorly the computers of the field’s early days compared to a modern smart phone. Another common feature was discussion of how the numerical relativists won their bet with Nobel laureate Kip Thorne by producing signal processing templates in time for LIGO’s first detection of gravitational waves. The session was very well attended and received by an engaged audience.

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