Satisfiability (SAT) is the problem of determining whether there is a variable assignment that fulfills a given Boolean formula.
Satisfiability (often written in all capitals or abbreviated SAT) is the problem of determining if the variables of a given Boolean formula can be assigned in such a way as to make the formula evaluate to TRUE.
SAT was the first known example of an NP-complete problem. Further, a wide range of other naturally occurring decision and optimization problems can be transformed into instances of SAT. A class of algorithms called SAT solvers can efficiently solve a large enough subset of SAT instances to be useful in various practical areas such as circuit design and automatic theorem proving.
History of Satisfiability
Note: This is the first chapter of "Handbook of Satisfiability" (WorldCat) by Hans van Maaren, Armin Biere, Toby Walsh
Also see the timeline on page 52.
