Desmond John Higham (born 17 February 1964 in

Salford Salford () is a city and the largest settlement in the City of Salford metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. In 2011, Salford had a population of 103,886. It is also the second and only other city in the metropolitan county afte ...

) is an

applied mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History One ...

and Professor of

Numerical Analysis Numerical analysis is the study of algorithms that use numerical approximation (as opposed to symbolic computation, symbolic manipulations) for the problems of mathematical analysis (as distinguished from discrete mathematics). It is the study of ...

the School of Mathematics at the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

. He is a graduate of the

Victoria University of Manchester The Victoria University of Manchester, usually referred to as simply the University of Manchester, was a university in Manchester, England. It was founded in 1851 as Owens College. In 1880, the college joined the federal Victoria University. Afte ...

gaining his BSc in 1985, MSc in and 1986 and PhD 1988. He was a postdoctoral Fellow at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

before taking up a Lectureship at the

University of Dundee The University of Dundee; . Abbreviated as ''Dund.'' for post-nominals. is a public university, public research university based in Dundee, Scotland. It was founded as a University college#United Kingdom, university college in 1881 with a donation ...

in 1990 and moving to a Readership at the

University of Strathclyde The University of Strathclyde ( gd, Oilthigh Shrath Chluaidh) is a public research university located in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded in 1796 as the Andersonian Institute, it is Glasgow's second-oldest university, having received its royal chart ...

in 1996. He was made Professor in 1999 and awarded the "1966 Chair of Numerical Analysis" in 2011. He moved to the University of Edinburgh in April 2019. Higham's main area of research is

stochastic Stochastic (, ) refers to the property of being well described by a random probability distribution. Although stochasticity and randomness are distinct in that the former refers to a modeling approach and the latter refers to phenomena themselv ...

computation, with applications in

data science Data science is an interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge and insights from noisy, structured and unstructured data, and apply knowledge from data across a br ...

deep learning Deep learning (also known as deep structured learning) is part of a broader family of machine learning methods based on artificial neural networks with representation learning. Learning can be supervised, semi-supervised or unsupervised. De ...

network science Network science is an academic field which studies complex networks such as telecommunication networks, computer networks, biological networks, cognitive and semantic networks, and social networks, considering distinct elements or actors repre ...

and

computational biology Computational biology refers to the use of data analysis, mathematical modeling and computational simulations to understand biological systems and relationships. An intersection of computer science, biology, and big data, the field also has fo ...

. He held a

Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award The Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award was an award made by the Royal Society from 2000 to 2020. It was administered by the Royal Society and jointly funded by the Wolfson Foundation and the UK Office of Science and Technology, to provide ...

(2012–2017) and is a Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Fellow and

Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This soci ...

. He won the 2005 SIAM Germund Dahlquist Prize (2005). In 2020 he was awarded a

Shephard Prize The Shephard Prize is awarded by the London Mathematical Society to a mathematician or mathematicians for making a contribution to mathematics with a strong intuitive component which can be explained to those with little or no knowledge of univer ...

from the

London Mathematical Society The London Mathematical Society (LMS) is one of the United Kingdom's learned societies for mathematics (the others being the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), the Edinburgh Mathematical S ...

He held an Established Career Fellowship from the EPSRC/URKI Digital Economy programme and is institutional lead on the EPSRC Mathematical Sciences Programme Grant Inference, Computation and Numerics for Insights into Cities (ICONIC). He is a member of Sub-panel 10, Mathematical Sciences, for the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021). Higham has authored five books: * ''Numerical Methods for Ordinary Differential Equations: Initial Value Problems'' (2010, with D. F. Griffiths), * ''An Introduction to Financial Option Valuation: Mathematics, Stochastics and Computation'' (2004), * ''MATLAB Guide'' (with his lovely brother

Nicholas Higham Nicholas John Higham FRS (born 25 December 1961 in Salford) is a British numerical analyst. He is Royal Society Research Professor and Richardson Professor of Applied Mathematics in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Manchest ...

, 3rd edition, 2017), * ''Learning LaTeX'' (with D. F. Griffiths, 2nd edition 2016), * ''An Introduction to the Numerical Simulation of Stochastic Differential Equations'' (2021, with P. E. Kloeden). He also edited the book * ''Network Science: Complexity in Nature and Technology'' (2010, with Ernesto Estrada, Maria Fox and Gian-Luca Oppo). He is Editor-in-Chief of

SIAM Review 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 ...

and is a member of the editorial boards of several other journals. Higham was an invited speaker at the conference Dynamics, Equations and Applications in

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...

in 2019.

References

External links

Home page at the University of Edinburgh

Desmond Higham at Google Scholar

Video ''Impact: When Mathematics Meets Digital Media Marketing'' describing the impact Higham's work has had with digital media business Bloom Media

Video ''Deep Learning: What Could Go Wrong'' a recent talk to a general science audience.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Higham, Desmond 20th-century British mathematicians 21st-century British mathematicians Numerical analysts Alumni of the University of Manchester Complex systems scientists Academics of the University of Strathclyde Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award holders Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh People from Salford 1964 births Living people Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics