The following timeline outlines the development of algorithms since their inception.

Before 1940

• C. 1600 BC - Babylonians develop first algorithms
• C. 300 BC - Euclid's algorithm
• C. 200 BC - the Sieve of Eratosthenes
• 263 - Gaussian elimination described by Liu Hui
• 1614 - John Napier develops method for performing calculations using logarithms
• 1671 - Newton-Raphson method developed by Isaac Newton
• 1690 - Newton-Raphson method independently developed by Joseph Raphson
• 1805 - Cooley-Tukey algorithm known by Carl Friedrich Gauss
• 1926 - Boruvka's algorithm

1940s

• 1945 - Merge sort developed by John von Neumann
• 1947 - Simplex algorithm developed by George Dantzig

1950s

• 1952 - Huffman coding developed by David A. Huffman
• 1954 - Radix sort computer algorithm developed by Harold H. Seward
• 1956 - Kruskal's algorithm developed by Joseph Kruskal
• 1957 - Prim's algorithm developed by Robert Prim
• 1957 - Bellman-Ford algorithm developed by R. Bellman and L. R. Ford
• 1959 - Dijkstra's algorithm developed by Edsger Dijkstra
• 1959 - Shell sort developed by D. L. Shell
• 1959 - De Casteljau's algorithm developed by Paul de Casteljau

1960s

• 1962 - Quicksort developed by C. A. R. Hoare
• 1962 - Ford-Fulkerson algorithm developed by L. R. Ford and D. R. Fulkerson
• 1962 - Bresenham's line algorithm developed by Jack E. Bresenham
• 1964 - Heapsort developed by J. W. J. Williams
• 1965 - Cooley-Tukey algorithm rediscovered by James Cooley and John Tukey
• 1965 - Levenshtein distance developed by Vladimir Levenshtein
• 1965 - Cocke-Younger-Kasami (CYK) algorithm independently developed by T. Kasami
• 1967 - Viterbi algorithm proposed by Andrew Viterbi
• 1967 - Cocke-Younger-Kasami (CYK) algorithm independently developed by D. H. Younger

1970s

• 1970 - Knuth-Bendix completion algorithm developed by Donald Knuth and P. B. Bendix
• 1972 - Graham scan developed by Ronald Graham
• 1973 - RSA encryption algorithm discovered by Clifford Cocks
• 1973 - Jarvis march algorithm developed by R. A. Jarvis
• 1974 - Pollard's p-1 algorithm developed by John Pollard
• 1975 - Genetic algorithms popularized by John Holland
• 1975 - Pollard's rho algorithm developed by John Pollard
• 1975 - Aho-Corasick algorithm developed by Alfred V. Aho and Margaret J. Corasick
• 1976 - Salamin-Brent algorithm independently discovered by Eugene Salamin and Richard Brent
• 1976 - Knuth-Morris-Pratt algorithm developed by Donald Knuth and Vaughan Pratt and independently by J. H. Morris
• 1977 - RSA encryption algorithm rediscovered by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Len Adleman
• 1977 - LZ77 algorithm developed by Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv
• 1978 - LZ78 algorithm developed from LZ77 by Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv
• 1978 - Bruun's algorithm proposed for powers of two by G. Bruun
• 1979 - Khaciyan's ellipsoid method developed by Leonid Khaciyan

1980s

• 1981 - Quadratic sieve developed by Carl Pomerance
• 1983 - Simulated annealing developed by S. Kirkpatrick , C. D. Gelatt and M. P. Vecchi
• 1984 - LZW algorithm developed from LZ78 by Terry Welch
• 1984 - Karmarkar's interior-point algorithm developed by Narendra Karmarkar
• 1985 - Simulated annealing independently developed by V. Cerny
• 1986 - Blum Blum Shub proposed by L. Blum , M. Blum , and M. Shub
• 1987 - RC4 (cipher) developed by Ron Rivest
• 1987 - Skipjack (cipher) designed by NSA
• 1988 - Special number field sieve developed by John Pollard

1990s

• 1990 - General number field sieve developed from SNFS by Carl Pomerance , Joe Buhler , Hendrik Lenstra , and Leonard Adleman
• 1991 - IDEA designed by Xuejia Lai and James L. Massey
• 1991 - MD5 developed by Ronald Rivest
• 1991 - Wait-free synchronization developed by Maurice Herlihy
• 1992 - Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm proposed by D. Deutsch and R. Jozsa
• 1993 - Blowfish (cipher) developed by Bruce Schneier
• 1994 - Shor's algorithm developed by Peter Shor
• 1994 - Burrows-Wheeler transform developed by Michael Burrows and David Wheeler
• 1995 - SHA-1 published by NIST
• 1996 - Bruun's algorithm generalized to arbitrary even composite sizes by H. Murakami
• 1996 - Grover's algorithm developed by Lov K. Grover
• 1996 - RIPEMD-160 developed by Hans Dobbertin , Antoon Bosselaers , and Bart Preneel
• 1998 - rsync algorithm developed by Andrew Tridgell
• 1999 - Yarrow algorithm designed by Bruce Schneier, John Kelsey , and Niels Ferguson

2000s

• 2000 - Rijndael cypher developed by Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen
• 2001 - AES cypher (based on Rijndael) adopted by NIST
• 2002 - AKS primality test developed by Manindra Agrawal, Neeraj Kayal and Nitin Saxena