Walter Gautschi (born December 11, 1927) is a Swiss- 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 ...

, known for his contributions to

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

. He has authored over 200 papers in his area and published four books. Born in

Basel , french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese , neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (BS ...

, he has a

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 ...

in mathematics from the

University of Basel The University of Basel (Latin: ''Universitas Basiliensis'', German: ''Universität Basel'') is a university in Basel, Switzerland. Founded on 4 April 1460, it is Switzerland's oldest university and among the world's oldest surviving universit ...

on the thesis ''Analyse graphischer Integrationsmethoden'' advised by

Alexander Ostrowski Alexander Markowich Ostrowski ( uk, Олександр Маркович Островський; russian: Алекса́ндр Ма́ркович Остро́вский; 25 September 1893, in Kiev, Russian Empire – 20 November 1986, in Mont ...

and

Andreas Speiser Andreas Speiser (June 10, 1885 – October 12, 1970) was a Swiss mathematician and philosopher of science. Life and work Speiser studied in Göttingen, starting in 1904, notably with David Hilbert, Felix Klein, Hermann Minkowski. In 1917 he becam ...

(1953). Since then, he did postdoctoral work as a Janggen-Pöhn Research Fellow at the ''Istituto Nazionale per le Applicazioni del Calcolo'' in

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

(1954) and at the Harvard Computation Laboratory (1955). He had positions at the

National Bureau of Standards The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...

(1956–59), the American University in

Washington D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, Na ...

, the

Oak Ridge National Laboratory Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a U.S. multiprogram science and technology national laboratory sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and administered, managed, and operated by UT–Battelle as a federally funded research an ...

(1959–63) before joining

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and mone ...

where he has worked from 1963 to 2000 and now being

professor emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

. He has been a Fulbright Scholar at the

Technical University of Munich The Technical University of Munich (TUM or TU Munich; german: Technische Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied and natural sciences. Establis ...

(1970) and held visiting appointments 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 ...

(1976), Argonne National Laboratory, the

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) is a United States Air Force base and census-designated place just east of Dayton, Ohio, in Greene and Montgomery counties. It includes both Wright and Patterson Fields, which were originally Wilbur Wr ...

, ETH Zurich (1996-2001), the University of Padova (1997), and the

(2000). As well-known (e.g. Gerhard Wanner, Geneva ca. 2011 and the well-known first-hand sources and subsequent reports such as Math. Intelligencer, etc), one of Gautschi's most important contributions on numerical simulation of special functions offered evidence and confidence to de Branges's tour-de-force attack on the elusive

Bieberbach conjecture In complex analysis, de Branges's theorem, or the Bieberbach conjecture, is a theorem that gives a necessary condition on a holomorphic function in order for it to map the open unit disk of the complex plane injectively to the complex plane. It ...

on the magnitude of coefficients of schlicht functions, which hitherto received only slow, difficult and partial progress by work of Bieberbach, Loewner, Gabaredian and Schiffer.

Books

*''Colloquium approximatietheorie'', MC Syllabus 14, Mathematisch Centrum Amsterdam, 1971. With H. Bavinck and G. M. Willems *''Numerical analysis: an introduction'', Birkhäuser, Boston, 1997; 2nd edition, 2012. *''Orthogonal polynomials: computation and approximation'', Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004. *''Walter Gautschi, Selected Works with Commentaries'', Springer Science & Business Media, 2013, 3 vols., Brezinski, Claude, and Ahmed Sameh, eds. *
volume 1volume 2volume 3
*''Orthogonal polynomials in

MATLAB MATLAB (an abbreviation of "MATrix LABoratory") is a proprietary multi-paradigm programming language and numeric computing environment developed by MathWorks. MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementa ...

: exercises and solutions'', SIAM, Philadelphia, 2016.

Surveys

* Gander, W., & Gautschi, W. (2000). Adaptive quadrature—revisited.

BIT Numerical Mathematics ''BIT Numerical Mathematics'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed mathematics journal that covers research in numerical analysis. It was established in 1961 by Carl Erik Fröberg and is published by Springer Science+Business Media. The name "BIT" is a re ...

, 40(1), 84-101. * Gautschi, W. (1996). Orthogonal polynomials: applications and computation.

Acta Numerica ''Acta Numerica'' is a mathematics journal publishing research on numerical analysis. It was established in 1992 to publish widely accessible summaries of recent advances in the field. One volume is published each year, consisting of review and s ...

, 5, 45-119. * Gautschi, W. (1981). A survey of Gauss-Christoffel quadrature formulae. In EB Christoffel (pp. 72-147). Birkhäuser, Basel. * Gautschi, W. (1967). Computational aspects of three-term recurrence relations. SIAM Review, 9(1), 24-82.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Gautschi, Walter Swiss mathematicians Scientists from Basel-Stadt Harvard University staff Academic staff of the Technical University of Munich Swiss emigrants to the United States University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty Academic staff of the University of Padua 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians University of Basel alumni Purdue University faculty 1927 births Living people Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics