Michael Grain Crandall (born November 29, 1940, in

Baton Rouge, Louisiana Baton Rouge ( ; ) is a city in and the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana. Located the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, it is the parish seat of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana's most populous parish—the equivalent of counties ...

) is an American mathematician, specializing in differential equations.

Mathematical career

In 1962 Crandall earned a baccalaureate in engineering physics from

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, changed to mathematics, earning a master's in 1964 and a PhD in 1965 under Heinz Cordes at Berkeley, with a thesis that solved a problem in celestial mechanics posed by

Carl Ludwig Siegel Carl Ludwig Siegel (31 December 1896 – 4 April 1981) was a German mathematician specialising in analytic number theory. He is known for, amongst other things, his contributions to the Thue–Siegel–Roth theorem in Diophantine approximation, ...

; the thesis title is ''Two families of plane solutions of the four body problem''. In 1965 he was an instructor at Berkeley, in 1966 an assistant professor at Stanford University and from 1969 at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...

(UCLA), where he was a professor from 1973 to 1976. From 1974 to 1984 he was a professor at the Mathematics Research Center at the

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United Stat ...

, from 1984 to 1990 as Hille-Professor of Mathematics. From 1988 until his retirement he was a professor at the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the U ...

. Crandall was several times a visiting professor at the

University of Paris , image_name = Coat of arms of the University of Paris.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of Arms , latin_name = Universitas magistrorum et scholarium Parisiensis , motto = ''Hic et ubique terrarum'' (Latin) , mottoeng = Here and a ...

, where he received an honorary doctorate in 1999. His legacy of contributions contains all but not limited to: Banach solutions in Euclidean spaces, Fourier transforms of planar variables, PDE concepts and iterations for sequence analysis, semigroup transform solutions, differential harmonic study of divergent hyperbole, physical transformations of finite Jacobian entities, unique harmonic populations in convergent contexts, application of abstract existence principles on non-linear contexts, normalized vector sequencing in multi-dimensional parallax geometries, and the mathematical equivalence study of topographical dissimilar nodes using traditional non-linear surfacing theories to produce distinct solutions in the realm of differential multi-variable applications. Crandall works primarily on partial differential equations, e.g., with

bifurcation theory Bifurcation theory is the mathematical study of changes in the qualitative or topological structure of a given family of curves, such as the integral curves of a family of vector fields, and the solutions of a family of differential equations. ...

, evolution equations, generation of semigroups of transformations on Banach spaces and the theory of

Hamilton–Jacobi equation In physics, the Hamilton–Jacobi equation, named after William Rowan Hamilton and Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, is an alternative formulation of classical mechanics, equivalent to other formulations such as Newton's laws of motion, Lagrangian mecha ...

s. With

Pierre-Louis Lions Pierre-Louis Lions (; born 11 August 1956) is a French people, French mathematician. He is known for a number of contributions to the fields of partial differential equations and the calculus of variations. He was a recipient of the 1994 Fields Me ...

he did research on the viscosity solutions of partial differential equations. In 2000 he was elected a member 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, a ...

. In 1999 he received the

Leroy P. Steele Prize The Leroy P. Steele Prizes are awarded every year by the American Mathematical Society, for distinguished research work and writing in the field of mathematics. Since 1993, there has been a formal division into three categories. The prizes have b ...

. In 1974 he was an Invited Lecturer (on "Semigroups of nonlinear equations and evolution equations") at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Vancouver. In 2012 he became a fellow 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, ...

. Among his doctoral students are Lawrence C. Evans and Panagiotis E. Souganidis.

References

External links

home page Crandall - UCSB Math. Dept.

Steele Prize to Crandall, pdf-file, Notices AMS
(76 kB) {{DEFAULTSORT:Crandall, Michael G. 1940 births Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Mathematical analysts PDE theorists Fellows of the American Mathematical Society University of California, Berkeley alumni Stanford University faculty University of California, Los Angeles faculty University of California, Santa Barbara faculty University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty