The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) was founded by a small group of mathematicians from academia and industry who met in Philadelphia in 1951 to start an organization whose members would meet periodically to exchange ideas about the uses of mathematics in industry. This meeting led to the organization of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. The membership of SIAM has grown from a few hundred in the early 1950s to more than 14,000 as of 2013.