Alan Stuart Edelman (born June 1963) is an American mathematician and computer scientist. He is a professor of

applied mathematics Applied mathematics is the application of mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathematical s ...

at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(MIT) and a Principal Investigator at the

MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Lab ...

(CSAIL) where he leads a group in applied computing. In 2004 he founded a business, Interactive Supercomputing, which was later acquired by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

. Edelman is a fellow of

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

(AMS),

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific socie ...

(SIAM),

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

(IEEE), and

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

(ACM), for his contributions in numerical linear algebra, computational science, parallel computing, and random matrix theory, and he is one of the cocreators of the technical programming language

Julia Julia is usually a feminine given name. It is a Latinate feminine form of the name Julio and Julius. (For further details on etymology, see the Wiktionary entry "Julius".) The given name ''Julia'' had been in use throughout Late Antiquity (e.g. ...

Education

An alumnus of

Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English cities on its south coast, Southampton and Portsmouth, Hampshire is ...

, Edelman received B.S. and M.S. degrees in mathematics from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

in 1984, and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from MIT in 1989 under the direction of

Lloyd N. Trefethen Lloyd Nicholas Trefethen (born 30 August 1955) is an American mathematician, professor of numerical analysis and head of the Numerical Analysis Group at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford. Education Trefethen was born 30 August 19 ...

. Following a year at

Thinking Machines Corporation Thinking Machines Corporation was a supercomputer manufacturer and artificial intelligence (AI) company, founded in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1983 by Sheryl Handler and Danny Hillis, W. Daniel "Danny" Hillis to turn Hillis's doctoral work at the ...

, and at CERFACS in France, Edelman went to

U.C. Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

as a Morrey Assistant Professor and Levy Fellow, 1990–93. He joined the MIT faculty in applied mathematics in 1993.

Research

Edelman's research interests include high-performance computing, numerical computation, linear algebra, and

random matrix theory In probability theory and mathematical physics, a random matrix is a matrix-valued random variable—that is, a matrix in which some or all elements are random variables. Many important properties of physical systems can be represented mathemat ...

. * In

, Edelman is most famous for the Edelman distribution of the smallest singular value of random matrices (also known as Edelman's law), the invention of beta ensembles, and the introduction of the stochastic operator approach, and some of the earliest computational approaches. * In high performance computing, Edelman is known for his work on parallel computing, as the co-founder of Interactive Supercomputing, as an inventor of the

Julia programming language Julia is a high-level, dynamic programming language. Its features are well suited for numerical analysis and computational science. Distinctive aspects of Julia's design include a type system with parametric polymorphism in a dynamic programm ...

and for his work on the Future

Fast Fourier transform A fast Fourier transform (FFT) is an algorithm that computes the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of a sequence, or its inverse (IDFT). Fourier analysis converts a signal from its original domain (often time or space) to a representation in th ...

. As the leader of the Julialab, he supervises work on scientific machine learning and compiler methodologies. * In

numerical linear algebra Numerical linear algebra, sometimes called applied linear algebra, is the study of how matrix operations can be used to create computer algorithms which efficiently and accurately provide approximate answers to questions in continuous mathematics. ...

, Edelman is known for eigenvalues and condition numbers of random matrices, the geometry of algorithms with orthogonality constraints, the geometry of the

generalized singular value decomposition In linear algebra, the generalized singular value decomposition (GSVD) is the name of two different techniques based on the singular value decomposition (SVD). The two versions differ because one version decomposes two matrices (somewhat like the ...

(GSVD), and applications of

Lie algebra In mathematics, a Lie algebra (pronounced ) is a vector space \mathfrak g together with an Binary operation, operation called the Lie bracket, an Alternating multilinear map, alternating bilinear map \mathfrak g \times \mathfrak g \rightarrow ...

to matrix factorizations.

Awards

Sloan fellow The Sloan Fellows program is the world's first mid-career and senior career master's degree in general management and leadership. It was initially supported by a grant from Alfred P. Sloan, the late CEO of General Motors, to his alma mater, MIT ...

, Edelman received a

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

(NSF) Faculty Career award in 1995. He has received numerous awards, among them the

Gordon Bell Prize The Gordon Bell Prize, commonly referred to as the Nobel Prize of Supercomputing, is an award presented by the Association for Computing Machinery each year in conjunction with the SC Conference series (formerly known as the Supercomputing Conferen ...

and Householder Prize (1990), the

Chauvenet Prize The Chauvenet Prize is the highest award for mathematical expository writing. It consists of a prize of $1,000 and a certificate, and is awarded yearly by the Mathematical Association of America in recognition of an outstanding expository article ...

(1998), the Edgerly Science Partnership Award (1999), the SIAM Activity Group on Linear Algebra Prize (2000), and the

Lester R. Ford Award Lester is an ancient Anglo-Saxon surname and given name. Notable people and characters with the name include: People Given name * Lester Bangs (1948–1982), American music critic * Lester W. Bentley (1908–1972), American artist from Wisc ...

, (2005, with

Gilbert Strang William Gilbert Strang (born November 27, 1934), usually known as simply Gilbert Strang or Gil Strang, is an American mathematician, with contributions to finite element theory, the calculus of variations, wavelet analysis and linear algebra. H ...

). * In 2011, Edelman was selected a Fellow of SIAM, "for his contributions in bringing together mathematics and industry in the areas of numerical linear algebra, random matrix theory, and parallel computing." * In 2015, he became a Fellow of the

"for contributions to random matrix theory, numerical linear algebra, high-performance algorithms, and applications." * In 2017, he became an IEEE Fellow Class of 2018 "for contributions to the development of technical-computing languages." *In 2019, he was selected as the winner of

Sidney Fernbach Award The Sidney Fernbach Award established in 1992 by the IEEE Computer Society, in memory of Sidney Fernbach, one of the pioneers in the development and application of high performance computers for the solution of large computational problems as the ...

IEEE Computer Society The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operati ...

"for outstanding breakthroughs in high-performance computing, linear algebra and computational science, and for contributions to the Julia programming language." * In 2021, he became an ACM Fellow of Class 2020 "for contributions to algorithms and languages for numerical and scientific computing."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Edelman, Alan 1963 births Living people People from Brooklyn Hampshire College alumni Yale College alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science faculty Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Fellow Members of the IEEE Sloan Research Fellows Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni

Education

Research

Awards

See also

References