C. William Gear (Charles William "Bill" Gear; 1 February 1935, in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

– 15 March 2022, in

Princeton, New Jersey Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of whi ...

) was a British-American mathematician who specialized in numerical analysis and computer science. Gear was an American citizen. Gear studied at the

University of Cambridge , 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 ...

with a bachelor's degree in 1957 and an M.A. in 1960, and at the

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Universi ...

with an M.S. in 1957 and a Ph.D. in 1960 under

Abraham H. Taub Abraham Haskel Taub (; February 1, 1911 – August 9, 1999) was a distinguished American mathematician and physicist, well known for his important contributions to the early development of general relativity, as well as differential geometry and ...

with his thesis ''Singular Shock Intersections in Plane Flow''. From 1960 to 1962, he worked as an engineer for IBM. From 1962 to 1990, he was a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he was the head of the computer science department from 1985 to 1990. From 1992 to 2000, he was president of the NEC Research Institute in Princeton. From 1966 to 1971, he was a consultant at

Argonne National Laboratory Argonne National Laboratory is a science and engineering research United States Department of Energy National Labs, national laboratory operated by University of Chicago, UChicago Argonne LLC for the United States Department of Energy. The facil ...

. Gear worked on numerical analysis, computer graphics, and software development. He was known for the development of BDF methods (originally introduced by the chemists Charles Francis Curtiss and

Joseph Oakland Hirschfelder Joseph Oakland Hirschfelder (May 27, 1911 – March 30, 1990) was an American physicist who participated in the Manhattan Project and in the creation of the nuclear bomb.

in 1952), a multi-step method for solving stiff systems of differential equations. Gear first published on BDF methods in 1966. Gear's work on BDF methods was a key component of the SPICE2 circuit simulator that pioneered CAD/CAM software for integrated circuit design and simulation. Since his retirement from NEC, he has collaborated with Prof. Kevrekidis at Princeton on ''equation-free methods''. Gear was elected as a member into the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...

in 1992 for seminal work in methods and software for solving classes of differential equations and differential-algebraic equations of significance in applications. He was also a Fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

and the

IEEE 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 ...

. In 1987 he received an honorary doctorate from the

Royal Institute of Technology The KTH Royal Institute of Technology ( sv, Kungliga Tekniska högskolan, lit=Royal Institute of Technology), abbreviated KTH, is a public research university in Stockholm, Sweden. KTH conducts research and education in engineering and technolo ...

in Stockholm.

Selected works

* ''Computer Organization and Programming.'' McGraw Hill, 1969; 4th edition: 1985 (with emphasis on the personal computer) * ''Introduction to Computer Science.'' Science Research Associates, Chicago 1973 * ''Programming in Pascal.'' Science Research Associates, 1983 * ''Numerical Initial Value Problems in Ordinary Differential Equations.'' Prentice Hall, 1971 *
Backward Differentiation Formulas
'' Scholarpedia

References

External links

C. W. Gear homepage, Princeton University
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gear, C William 20th-century American mathematicians American computer scientists Alumni of the University of Cambridge Presidents of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty 1935 births 2022 deaths Scientists from London Fellow Members of the IEEE Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Argonne National Laboratory people 20th-century American engineers NEC people