Alex Barnett (born 1972) is a senior mathematician at the

Flatiron Institute The Flatiron Institute is an internal research division of the Simons Foundation, launched in 2016. It comprises five centers for computational science: the Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA); the Center for Computational Biology (CCB); t ...

and professor of mathematics at

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...

. Barnett is also a jazz and funk musician. He has composed the music for a number of films by his wife, director

Liz Canner Liz Canner is an American filmmaker who makes documentaries, digital public art installations and new media projects on human rights issues. Her documentary ''Deadly Embrace: Nicaragua, The World Bank and the IMF'' (1995), was one of the first fil ...

Career

Barnett attended

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

and received his Ph.D in theoretical physics from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. He has written on topics such as efficient and accurate computational methods for waves, PDE eigenvalue problems, periodic problems, and quantum chaos. His high-frequency

eigenfunction In mathematics, an eigenfunction of a linear operator ''D'' defined on some function space is any non-zero function f in that space that, when acted upon by ''D'', is only multiplied by some scaling factor called an eigenvalue. As an equation, th ...

calculations are some of the fastest in the world. Barnett was on the faculty at Dartmouth for twelve years before becoming a full professor in 2017. He was the third person hired at the

and is currently a senior mathematician there.

Recognition

In 2010, Barnett won first prize in the XXI

International Physics Olympiad The International Physics Olympiad (IPhO) is an annual physics competition for high school students. It is one of the International Science Olympiads. The first IPhO was held in Warsaw, Poland in 1967. Each national delegation is made up of at ...

He has also received the Hockins Prize, the

Kennedy Scholarship Kennedy Scholarships provide full funding for up to ten British post-graduate students to study at either Harvard University or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Susan Hockfield, the sixteenth president of MIT, described the schol ...

, the Karen E. Wetterhahn Memorial Award for Distinguished Creative or Scholarly Achievement, the Jeffe Fellowship, and the Harold T. White Prize.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Barnett, Alex Living people English mathematicians Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni 1972 births Alumni of the University of Cambridge Dartmouth College faculty