Max D. Gunzburger,

Francis Eppes Francis Wayles Eppes (September 20, 1801 – May 30, 1881) was a planter and slave owner from Virginia who became a cotton planter in the Florida Territory and later civic leader in Tallahassee and surrounding Leon County, Florida. After reaching ...

Distinguished Professor of

Mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

Florida State University Florida State University (FSU) is a public research university in Tallahassee, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida. Founded in 1851, it is located on the oldest continuous site of higher education in the st ...

, is an American

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 On ...

and

computational scientist A computational scientist is a person skilled in scientific computing. This person is usually a scientist, a statistician, an applied mathematician, or an engineer who applies high-performance computing and sometimes cloud computing in different w ...

affiliated with the Florida State interdisciplinary Department of Scientific Computing. He was the 2008 winner of the

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W.T. and Idalia Reid Prize in Mathematics. His seminal research contributions include flow control,

finite element analysis The finite element method (FEM) is a popular method for numerically solving differential equations arising in engineering and mathematical modeling. Typical problem areas of interest include the traditional fields of structural analysis, heat ...

superconductivity Superconductivity is a set of physical properties observed in certain materials where electrical resistance vanishes and magnetic flux fields are expelled from the material. Any material exhibiting these properties is a superconductor. Unlike ...

and Voronoi tessellations. He has also made contributions in the areas of

aerodynamics Aerodynamics, from grc, ἀήρ ''aero'' (air) + grc, δυναμική (dynamics), is the study of the motion of air, particularly when affected by a solid object, such as an airplane wing. It involves topics covered in the field of fluid dyn ...

, materials,

acoustics Acoustics is a branch of physics that deals with the study of mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including topics such as vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician ...

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...

groundwater Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit of rock or an unconsolidate ...

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and risk assessment.

Ph.D.

After completing his BS degree at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a 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-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

in 1966, Gunzburger earned his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

degree from the same University in 1969. His thesis, titled ''Diffraction of shock waves by a thin wing—Symmetric and anti-symmetric problems'', was written under the direction of Lu Ting.

Early career

Gunzburger began his career at New York University as a research scientist and assistant professor of mathematics, a position he held from receiving his Ph.D. until 1971. He then spent two years working as a post-doctorate at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory before transferring to the Institute for Computer Applications in Science and Engineering at

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

until 1976. He then became an associate professor and professor of mathematics at the

University of Tennessee The University of Tennessee (officially The University of Tennessee, Knoxville; or UT Knoxville; UTK; or UT) is a public land-grant research university in Knoxville, Tennessee. Founded in 1794, two years before Tennessee became the 16th state, ...

, a position he held from 1976 to 1982. Transferring again, he moved from

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

in 1981 to 1989, to

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Virginia Tech (formally the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and informally VT, or VPI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It also has educational facilities in six regi ...

from 1987 to 1997. In 1989 he completed his influential first book, "Finite Element Methods for Viscous Incompressible Flows: A Guide to Theory, Practice and Algorithms," , which according to Google scholar has over 400 citations as of March 200

.

Distinguished professorship

In 1995, Gunzburger took a position with

Iowa State University Iowa State University of Science and Technology (Iowa State University, Iowa State, or ISU) is a public land-grant research university in Ames, Iowa. Founded in 1858 as the Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm, Iowa State became one of the n ...

as professor and chair of mathematics. In 2001, he was awarded distinguished professor of mathematics. At Iowa State he wrote three other books. Gunzburger came to the Florida State University in 2002. As an Eppes professor, Gunzburger is among the university's most distinguished scholars. He currently serves as the chair of the Department of

Scientific Computing Computational science, also known as scientific computing or scientific computation (SC), is a field in mathematics that uses advanced computing capabilities to understand and solve complex problems. It is an area of science that spans many disc ...

SIAM

Gunzburger served as editor-in-chief of the

Journal on

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 ...

from 2000 to 2007. He also served as the chairman of the board of trustees in 2003 and has held various other SIAM positions

Awards and honors

In 2007, issues 3–4 in volume 4 of the "International Journal of Numerical Analysis and Modeling" were dedicated to Gunzburger to honor the occasion of his 60th birthday. In 2008, Gunzburger was awarded the W.T. and Idalia Reid Prize in Mathematics, an award given for "research in, or other contributions to, the broadly defined areas of differential equations and control theory." The award was given based on "fundamental contributions to control of distributed parameter systems and computational mathematics." Gunzbuger was elected a

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 ...

on May 1, 2009 for "contributions to control of fluids and scientific computing."

Publications

As of March 2009, Gunzburger has published 153 peer-reviewed articles in scholarly journals (162 according to MathSciNet). Three of the most highly cited are *

Qiang Du Qiang Du (), the Fu Foundation Professor of Applied Mathematics at Columbia University, is a Chinese mathematician and computational scientist. Prior to moving to Columbia, he was the Verne M. Willaman Professor of Mathematics at Pennsylvania Stat ...

, Max Gunzburger, and Janet S. Peterson, "Analysis and approximation of the Ginzburg-Landau model of superconductivity", SIAM Review 34 (1992), no 1, 54–81. * Qiang Du, Vance Faber, and Max Gunzburger, "Centroidal Voronoi tessellations: Applications and algorithms", SIAM Review 41 (1999), no. 4, pp. 637–676. * Pavel B. Bochev and Max Gunzburger, "Finite element methods of least-squares type", SIAM Review 40 (1998), no. 4, 789–837.

Students and Post-Doctorates

As of March 2009, 29 students had completed their Ph.D. degrees under Gunzburger's supervision. He had also supported 11 post-doctorates.

External links

*
Florida State University faculty profile

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gunzburger, Max 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Numerical analysts Fluid dynamicists Florida State University faculty New York University alumni Living people Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Year of birth missing (living people)