Stanley Osher (born April 24, 1942) is an American mathematician, known for his many contributions in

shock capturing In computational fluid dynamics, shock-capturing methods are a class of techniques for computing inviscid flows with shock waves. The computation of flow containing shock waves is an extremely difficult task because such flows result in sharp, disc ...

level-set method Level-set methods (LSM) are a conceptual framework for using level sets as a tool for numerical analysis of surfaces and shapes. The advantage of the level-set model is that one can perform numerical computations involving curves and surfaces o ...

s, and PDE-based methods in

computer vision Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the human ...

and

image processing An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensio ...

. Osher is a professor 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 Californ ...

(UCLA), Director of Special Projects in the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM) and member of the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UCLA. He has a daughter, Kathryn, and a son, Joel.

Education

* BS,

Brooklyn College , mottoeng = Nothing without great effort , established = , parent = CUNY , type = Public university , endowment = $98.0 million (2019) , budget = $123.96 m ...

, 1962 * MS, New York University, 1964 * PhD,

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, th ...

, 1966

Research interests

Level-set method Level-set methods (LSM) are a conceptual framework for using level sets as a tool for numerical analysis of surfaces and shapes. The advantage of the level-set model is that one can perform numerical computations involving curves and surfaces o ...

s for computing moving fronts * Approximation methods for hyperbolic

conservation law In physics, a conservation law states that a particular measurable property of an isolated physical system does not change as the system evolves over time. Exact conservation laws include conservation of energy, conservation of linear momentum, c ...

s and

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 * Total variation (TV) and other PDE-based image processing techniques * Scientific computing * Applied partial differential equations * L¹/TV-based convex optimization Osher is listed as an

ISI highly cited researcher The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) was an academic publishing service, founded by Eugene Garfield in Philadelphia in 1956. ISI offered scientometric and bibliographic database services. Its specialty was citation indexing and analys ...

Research contributions

Osher was the inventor (or co-inventor) and developer of many highly successful numerical methods for computational physics,

and other fields, including: * High resolution numerical schemes to compute flows having shocks and steep gradients, including

ENO Eno may refer to: Music * English National Opera, London * ''Eno'', an album by Japanese band Polysics * "Eno", a song by X-Wife from '' Rockin' Rio EP'' Organisations and businesses * Eno (company), a Chinese clothing and accessories busine ...

(essentially non-oscillatory) schemes (with Harten, Chakravarthy, Engquist, Shu), WENO (weighted ENO) schemes (with Liu and Chan), the Osher scheme, the Engquist-Osher scheme, and the Hamilton–Jacobi versions of these methods. These methods have been widely used in

computational fluid dynamics Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a branch of fluid mechanics that uses numerical analysis and data structures to analyze and solve problems that involve fluid flows. Computers are used to perform the calculations required to simulate ...

(CFD) and related fields. * Total variation (TV)-based image restoration (with Rudin and Fatemi) and shock filters (with Rudin). These are pioneering - and widely used - methods for PDE based image processing and have also been used for

inverse problem An inverse problem in science is the process of calculating from a set of observations the causal factors that produced them: for example, calculating an image in X-ray computed tomography, source reconstruction in acoustics, or calculating the ...

s. *

(with Sethian) for capturing moving interfaces, which has been phenomenally successful as a key tool in PDE based

and

, as well as applications in

differential geometry Differential geometry is a mathematical discipline that studies the geometry of smooth shapes and smooth spaces, otherwise known as smooth manifolds. It uses the techniques of differential calculus, integral calculus, linear algebra and mult ...

image segmentation In digital image processing and computer vision, image segmentation is the process of partitioning a digital image into multiple image segments, also known as image regions or image objects ( sets of pixels). The goal of segmentation is to simpli ...

optimal design In the design of experiments, optimal designs (or optimum designs) are a class of experimental designs that are optimal with respect to some statistical criterion. The creation of this field of statistics has been credited to Danish statistic ...

Two-phase flow In fluid mechanics, two-phase flow is a flow of gas and liquid — a particular example of multiphase flow. Two-phase flow can occur in various forms, such as flows transitioning from pure liquid to vapor as a result of external heating, sep ...

crystal growth A crystal is a solid material whose constituent atoms, molecules, or ions are arranged in an orderly repeating pattern extending in all three spatial dimensions. Crystal growth is a major stage of a crystallization process, and consists of the ...

deposition Deposition may refer to: * Deposition (law), taking testimony outside of court * Deposition (politics), the removal of a person of authority from political power * Deposition (university), a widespread initiation ritual for new students practiced f ...

and

etching Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types ...

. * Bregman iteration and augmented Lagrangian type methods for L¹ and L¹-related optimization problems which are fundamental to the fields of compressed sensing, matrix completion,

robust principal component analysis Robust Principal Component Analysis (RPCA) is a modification of the widely used statistical procedure of principal component analysis (PCA) which works well with respect to ''grossly'' corrupted observations. A number of different approaches exist f ...

, etc. * Overcoming the

curse of dimensionality The curse of dimensionality refers to various phenomena that arise when analyzing and organizing data in high-dimensional spaces that do not occur in low-dimensional settings such as the three-dimensional physical space of everyday experience. T ...

for

s arising in

control theory Control theory is a field of mathematics that deals with the control system, control of dynamical systems in engineered processes and machines. The objective is to develop a model or algorithm governing the application of system inputs to drive ...

and

differential game In game theory, differential games are a group of problems related to the modeling and analysis of conflict in the context of a dynamical system. More specifically, a state variable or variables evolve over time according to a differential equatio ...

s. Osher has founded (or co-founded) three successful companies: * Cognitech (with Rudin) * Level Set Systems * Luminescent Technologies (with Yablonovitch) Osher has been a thesis advisor for at least 53 PhD students, with 188 descendants, as well as postdoctoral adviser and collaborator for many applied mathematicians. His PhD students have been evenly distributed among academia and industry and labs, most of them are involved in applying mathematical and computational tools to industrial or scientific application areas.

Honors

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...

(NAE), 2018 * William Benter Prize in Applied Mathematics, 2016. *

Carl Friedrich Gauss Prize The Carl Friedrich Gauss Prize for Applications of Mathematics is a mathematics award, granted jointly by the International Mathematical Union and the German Mathematical Society for "outstanding mathematical contributions that have found significa ...

, 2014. * John von Neumann Lecture prize from

SIAM Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...

, 2013. * 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, meeting ...

, 2013. * Plenary speaker,

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the Nevanlinna Prize (to be rena ...

, 2010 *

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 ...

, 2009 * Fellow,

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific soci ...

(SIAM), 2009 * Honorary Doctoral Degree,

Hong Kong Baptist University Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) is a publicly funded tertiary liberal arts institution with a Christian education heritage. It was established as Hong Kong Baptist College with the support of American Baptists, who provided both operati ...

, 2009 * International Cooperation Award, International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians, 2007 * Computational and Applied Sciences Award, United States Association for Computational Mechanics, 2007 * Docteur Honoris Causa, ENS Cachan, France 2006 *

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...

(NAS), 2005 *

Kleinman Prize, 2005 * ICIAM Pioneer Prize, 2003 * Computational Mechanics Award, Japan Society of Mechanical Engineering, 2002 *

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, succeedin ...

Public Service Group Achievement Award, 1992 * US-Israel BSF Fellow, 1986 * SERC Fellowship (England), 1982 * Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, 1972–1974 * Fulbright Fellow, 1971

Books authored

* * *

References

External links

Osher's home page
at

UCLA 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 ...

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Osher, Stanley 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Computational fluid dynamicists Jewish American scientists 1942 births Living people University of California, Los Angeles faculty Numerical analysts Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences alumni Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Scientific computing researchers Brooklyn College alumni 21st-century American Jews