Joseph E. Oliger (September 3, 1941 – August 28, 2005) was an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

and professor at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. Oliger was the co-founder of the Science in Computational and Mathematical Engineering degree program at Stanford, and served as the director of the Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science.

Early life and education

Oliger was born in Indiana in 1941, the son of salesman Emmert Oliger and homemaker Catherine Oliger, and grew up on a farm in Greensburg, Indiana. Oliger graduated from the University of Colorado with a B.S. in mathematics in 1966, and later continued on to complete an M.S. in applied math in 1971. From 1965 to 1973, Oliger worked as a computer programmer and analyst at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. There, Oliger met

Heinz-Otto Kreiss Heinz-Otto Kreiss (14 September 1930 – 16 December 2015) was a German mathematician in the fields of numerical analysis, applied mathematics, and what was the new area of computing in the early 1960s. Born in Hamburg, Germany, he earned his Ph.D ...

, who was a professor at

Uppsala University Uppsala University ( sv, Uppsala universitet) is a public university, public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the List of universities in Sweden, oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries still in opera ...

at the time, and they began working together. Kreiss became Oliger's PhD advisor, and Oliger completed his Ph.D. from Uppsala University in 1973.

Research focus

Oliger is known for his work on numerical methods to approximate solutions of partial differential equations, with applications to weather forecasting. For example, in his early work with Heinz in 1972, for a model problem on wave propagation Oliger determined to what order of Fourier analysis was required to guarantee a desired level of accuracy. Along with

Marsha Berger Marsha J. Berger (born 1953) is an American computer scientist. Her areas of research include numerical analysis, computational fluid dynamics, and high-performance parallel computing. She is a Silver Professor (emeritus) of Computer Science and M ...

and

Philip Colella Phillip Colella is an American applied mathematician and a member of the Applied Numerical Algorithms Group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He has also worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He is known for his fundamenta ...

, Oliger developed the technique of

adaptive mesh refinement In numerical analysis, adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) is a method of adapting the accuracy of a solution within certain sensitive or turbulent regions of simulation, dynamically and during the time the solution is being calculated. When solutions ...

. One adaptive mesh refinement algorithm first developed by Berger and Oliger, and later refined by Berger and Colella, is taught today and referred to as the Berger-Oliger or Berger-Oliger-Colella method.

Stanford University

In 1974, Oliger joined the Computer Science department at

as an assistant professor. In 1987, Oliger co-founded the Science in Computational and Mathematical Engineering degree program at Stanford with three colleagues. As a professor at Stanford, Oliger graduated over 20 PhD students and currently has over 100 academic descendants. Oliger was the author of the widely used textbook, ''Time-Dependent Problems and Difference Methods'', with

Bertil Gustafsson Bertil Gustafsson (born 1939) is a Swedish applied mathematician and numerical analyst. He is currently a Professor emeritus in the Department of Information Technology at Uppsala University, Sweden. Gustafsson is known for his work in numerical ...

and

. Oliger served as the director of the Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science in the 1990s. In 2001, Oliger retired from Stanford.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Oliger, Joseph American computer scientists Stanford University faculty American expatriates in Sweden 1941 births 2005 deaths People from Greensburg, Indiana Uppsala University alumni University of Colorado alumni Scientists from Indiana