Kenneth "Ken" Morgan Golden is an American applied mathematician and Distinguished Professor at the

University of Utah The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of De ...

. He is recognized as the "Indiana Jones of Mathematics" for his work in polar climate modeling and has traveled to the polar regions eighteen times, in total, to study

sea ice Sea ice arises as seawater freezes. Because ice is less dense than water, it floats on the ocean's surface (as does fresh water ice, which has an even lower density). Sea ice covers about 7% of the Earth's surface and about 12% of the world's oce ...

Biography

Golden first became interested in sea ice in his senior year of high school while working on a project studying passive microwave images of Antarctic sea ice at

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC empl ...

. He enrolled in

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 ...

so that he could work at the

Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory The Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) is a United States Army Corps of Engineers, Engineer Research and Development Center research facility headquartered in Hanover, New Hampshire, that provides scientific and engineering ...

with Stephen F. Ackley. He graduated from Dartmouth in 1980 with his bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics, and enrolled in the PhD program at the

NYU New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-United States Secretary of the Treasu ...

Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (commonly known as Courant or CIMS) is the mathematics research school of New York University (NYU), and is among the most prestigious mathematics schools and mathematical sciences research cente ...

. He received his PhD in 1984 and then worked as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in mathematical physics at

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

and as an assistant professor of mathematics at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

. He joined the Department of Mathematics at the

in 1991. In 2012 he became one of the inaugural

fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

s of the

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, ...

. Golden's research focuses on modeling sea ice and its role in the climate system using theories of composite materials and statistical physics.

References

Living people Applied mathematicians American climatologists Dartmouth College alumni Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences alumni Princeton University faculty University of Utah faculty Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Fellows of the American Mathematical Society American polar explorers Explorers of Antarctica Fellows of the Explorers Club Year of birth missing (living people) {{US-mathematician-stub