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Interview with Peter D. Lax, Volume 53, Number 2

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Interview with Peter D. Lax, Volume 53, Number 2 Interview with Peter D. Lax Martin Raussen and Christian Skau Peter D. Lax is the recipient of the 2005 Abel Prize of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. On May 24, 2005, prior to the Abel Prize celebrations in Oslo, Lax was interviewed by Martin Raussen of Aalborg University and Christian Skau of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. This interview originally appeared in the European Mathematical Society Newsletter, September 2005, pages 24–31. Raussen & Skau: On behalf of the Norwegian and bued with the utter importance of computing for Danish Mathematical Societies we would like to con- science and mathematics. Los Alamos, under the gratulate you on winning the Abel Prize for 2005. influence of von Neumann, was for a while in the You came to the U.S. in 1941 as a fifteen-year- 1950s and the early 1960s the undisputed leader old kid from Hungary. Only three years later, in in computational science. 1944, you were drafted into the U.S Army. Instead of being shipped overseas to the war front, you Research Contributions were sent to Los Alamos in 1945 to participate in R & S: May we come back to computers later? First the Manhattan Project, building the first atomic some questions about some of your main research bomb. It must have been awesome as a young man contributions to mathematics: You have made out- to come to Los Alamos to take part in such a mo- standing contributions to the theory of nonlinear mentous endeavor and to meet so many legendary partial differential equations. For the theory and nu- famous scientists: Fermi, Bethe, Szilard, Wigner, merical solutions of hyperbolic systems of conser- Teller, Feynman, to name some of the physicists, and vation laws your contribution has been decisive, von Neumann and Ulam, to name some of the math- not to mention your contribution to the under- ematicians. How did this experience shape your standing of the propagation of discontinuities, so- view of mathematics and influence your choice of called shocks. Could you describe in a few words how a research field within mathematics? you were able to overcome the formidable obstacles Lax: In fact, I returned for a year’s stay at Los and difficulties this area of mathematics presented? Alamos after I got my Ph.D. in 1949 and then spent Lax: Well, when I started to work on it I was very many summers as a consultant. The first time I much influenced by two papers. One was Eberhard spent in Los Alamos, and especially the later ex- Hopf’s on the viscous limit of Burgers’ equation, posure, shaped my mathematical thinking. First of and the other was the von Neumann-Richtmyer all, it was the experience of being part of a scien- paper on artificial viscosity. And looking at these tific team—not just of mathematicians, but people examples I was able to see what the general the- with different outlooks—with the aim being not a ory might look like. theorem, but a product. One cannot learn that from R & S: The astonishing discovery by Kruskal and books, one must be a participant, and for that Zabusky in the 1960s of the role of solitons for so- reason I urge my students to spend at least a sum- lutions of the Korteweg-deVries (KdV) equation, and mer as a visitor at Los Alamos. Los Alamos has a the no less astonishing subsequent explanation given very active visitor’s program. Secondly, it was by several people that the KdV equation is com- there—that was in the 1950s—that I became im- pletely integrable, represented a revolutionary de- velopment within the theory of nonlinear partial dif- Martin Raussen is associate professor of mathematics at ferential equations. You entered this field with an Aalborg University, Denmark. His email address is ingenious original point of view, introducing the [email protected]. so-called Lax-pair, which gave an understanding of Christian Skau is professor of mathematics at Norwegian how the inverse scattering transform applies to University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. equations like the KdV, and also to other nonlinear His email address is [email protected]. equations which are central in mathematical physics, FEBRUARY 2006 NOTICES OF THE AMS 223 Now the question is: Are completely integrable systems exceptions to the behavior of solutions of non-integrable systems, or is it that other systems have similar behavior, only we are unable to ana- lyze it? And here our guide might well be the Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser theorem which says that a system near a completely integrable system behaves as if it were completely integrable. Now, what near means is one thing when you prove theorems, another when you do experiments. It’s another aspect of numerical experimentation re- vealing things. So I do think that studying com- pletely integrable systems will give a clue to the be- (Photo: Knut Falch/Scanpix) Copyright: Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi/Abelprisen. havior of more general systems as well. Peter D. Lax was interviewed by Martin Raussen and Who could have guessed in 1965 that completely Christian Skau at the Hotel Continental in Oslo. integrable systems would become so important? R & S: The next question is about your seminal like the sine-Gordon and the nonlinear Schrödinger paper “Asymptotic solutions of oscillating initial equation. Could you give us some thoughts on how value problems” from 1957. This paper is consid- important you think this theory is for mathemati- ered by many people to be the genesis of Fourier In- cal physics and for applications, and how do you tegral Operators. What was the new viewpoint in the view the future of this field? paper that proved to be so fruitful? Lax: Perhaps I should start by pointing out that Lax: It is a micro-local description of what is the astonishing phenomenon of the interaction of going on. It combines looking at the problem in the solitons was discovered by numerical calculations, large and in the small. It combines both aspects, as was predicted by von Neumann some years be- and that gives it its strengths. The numerical im- fore, namely that calculations will reveal extremely plementation of the micro-local point of view is by interesting phenomena. Since I was a good friend wavelets and similar approaches, which are very of Kruskal, I learned early about his discoveries, and powerful numerically. that started me thinking. It was quite clear that R & S: May we touch upon your collaboration with there are infinitely many conserved quantities, and Ralph Phillips—on and off over a span of more than so I asked myself: How can you generate all at once thirty years—on scattering theory, applying it in a an infinity of conserved quantities? I thought if you number of settings. Could you comment on this col- had a transformation that preserved the spectrum laboration, and what do you consider to be the most of an operator then that would be such a trans- important results you obtained? formation, and that turned out to be a very fruit- Lax: That was one of the great pleasures of my life! Ralph Phillips is one of the great analysts of ful idea, applicable quite widely. our time and we formed a very close friendship. We Now you ask how important is it? I think it is had a new way of viewing the scattering process pretty important. After all, from the point of view with incoming and outgoing subspaces. We were, of technology for the transmission of signals, sig- so to say, carving a semi-group out of the unitary nalling by solitons is very important and a promis- group, whose infinitesimal generator contained al- ing future technology in trans-oceanic transmission. most all the information about the scattering This was developed by Linn Mollenauer, a brilliant process. So we applied that to classical scattering engineer at Bell Labs. It has not yet been put into of sound waves and electromagnetic waves by po- practice, but it will be some day. The interesting tentials and obstacles. Following a very interesting thing about it is that classical signal theory is en- discovery of Faddeev and Pavlov, we studied the tirely linear, and the main point of soliton signal spectral theory of automorphic functions. We elab- transmission is that the equations are nonlinear. orated it further, and we had a brand new approach That’s one aspect of the practical importance of it. to Eisenstein series for instance, getting at spectral As for the theoretic importance: the KdV equa- representation via translation representation. And tion is completely integrable, and then an aston- we were even able to contemplate—following Fad- ishing number of other completely integrable sys- deev and Pavlov—the Riemann hypothesis peeking tems were discovered. Completely integrable around the corner. systems can really be solved in the sense that the R & S: That must have been exciting! general population uses the word solved. When a Lax: Yes! Whether this approach will lead to the mathematician says he has solved the problem he proof of the Riemann hypothesis, stating it, as one means he knows the solution exists, that it’s unique, can, purely in terms of decaying signals by cutting but very often not much more. out all standing waves, is unlikely. The Riemann 224 NOTICES OF THE AMS VOLUME 53, NUMBER 2 hypothesis is a very elusive thing. You may re- experimental facts, and, in particular, some nu- member in Peer Gynt there is a mystical character, merical evidence. the Boyg, which bars Peer Gynt’s way wherever he R & S: In the history of mathematics, Abel and goes.
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