So particle physics will stall, with only a few people able to work on the hardest calculations. In April, Vermaseren will hold a summit of FORM users to plan for the future.

If the situation does not change, particle physics may be forced to slow down dramatically. FORM got its start in the mid-1980s, when the role of computers was changing rapidly.

Since 2000, a particle physics paper that cites FORM has been published every few days, on average. “Most of the [high-precision] results that our group obtained in the past 20 years were heavily ...