GAUSSIAN is a computational chemistry software program. (Generally the word Gaussian means pertaining to Carl Friedrich Gauss or his ideas.)
The Gaussian package was first written by John Pople and the name originates from Pople's use of Gaussian orbitals to speed calculations over those using Slater-type orbitals. The practice improved performance on slower computer hardware and facilitated the growth of computational chemistry, particularly ab initio methods such as Hartree-Fock. Gaussian's copyright was originally held by Carnegie Mellon University, and later by Gaussian, Inc.
Gaussian quickly became one of the most popular and widely-used computational chemistry packages. Prof. Pople and his research group were among those who pushed the development of the package, including cutting-edge research into quantum chemistry and other methods.
Gaussian, Inc. has invited the ire of many in the computational chemistry community by banning many prominent researchers in the field from using their software. Even Prof. Pople was banned by Gaussian.
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