Although the University of Waterloo was founded in 1957, it was not until 1967 that the Faculty of Mathematics was established. Today its four departments (Pure Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Combinatorics & Optimization, Statistics & Actuarial Science) together with the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science form one of the largest groups of mathematical talent in the world.

Don Cowan, 1st Chair of Computer Science at Waterloo

The School of Computer Science was originally called “Applied Analysis and Computer Science”. In 1967 its founding members were Professors Janos Aczel, J. Wesley Graham, H. Haruki, and Mike A. McKiernan; Associate Professors Donald D. Cowan (chair) and J. Douglas Lawson; Assistant Professors Peter C. Jennings and John C. Wilson; and Lecturers Peter C. Brillinger, Paul H. Cress, Paul H. Dirksen, Jan G. Kent, and Byron L. Ehle. By 1969 Applied Analysis and Computer Science had become the largest department in the Faculty of Mathematics. Also that year, the first two PhD degrees were awarded: to Ehle, for a thesis on numerical analysis and to Hugh Williams, for a thesis on computational number theory.

Byron Ehle

and Hugh Williams, Waterloo's first PhDs in Computer Science

• Doctoral Degrees Conferred in Computer Science at the University of Waterloo
• Chairs and Directors of Computer Science at Waterloo

Even before the department was founded, however, Waterloo was having an impact on computer science. In 1965, four third-year mathematics students (Richard Shirley, Angus German, James Mitchell, and Bob Zarnke) wrote the WATFOR compiler for the FORTRAN programming language, under the direction of lecturer Peter Shantz. "Within a year it would be adopted by computing centres in over eight countries, and the number of student users at UW increased to over 2500." (Ponzo) In 1966, two mathematics lecturers (Paul Dirksen and Paul Cress) led a team that developed WATFOR 360, for which they received the 1972 Grace Murray Hopper Award from the ACM.

• Citation for Paul Cress
• Citation for Paul Dirksen

Later, extensions to FORTRAN were incorporated into an immensely popular compiler known as WATFIV.

Patrick Fischer replaced Don Cowan as chair in 1972. In 1975 the term “Applied Analysis” was dropped from the name of the department, which became simply Computer Science, and J. Douglas Lawson became the new chair.

Kelly Booth joined the Computer Science Department in 1977 and John Beatty in 1978 and in 1979, they began a research group in Computer Graphics and Interaction. Together with Richard Bartels who joined the department in 1981, they formed the Computer Graphics Laboratory (CGL), one of the first in Canada. Two graduates of CGL, Rob Krieger and Paul Breslin, would go on to win Academy Awards, and Marceli Wein, adjunct professor of computer science, won an Academy Award for technical achievement in 1997 for his work in computer animation.