ADVERTISEMENT Vladimir Rokhlin receives the William Benter Prize in Applied Mathematics

City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has awarded the Applied Mathematics. He was William Benter Prize in Applied Mathematics 2014 to also named an IEEE Honorary Vladimir Rokhlin, a master in who has ad- Member in 2006 and a Fellow vanced the frontiers of computational mathematics and of the Society for Industrial engineering. and Applied Mathematics in 2009. Vladimir Rokhlin, Professor of Mathematics and the Ar- thur K. Watson Professor of at Yale Citation University, has earned world-wide acclaim for his tre- Vladimir Rokhlin was mendous contributions in numerical analysis and ap- the first person who took a plied mathematics, in particular for his work in the systematic approach to com- Analysis-based fast : Fast multipole meth- bining approximation theory, ods (FMM), Nonuniform FFT, fast Laplace transform, the classical theory of special fast Legendre transform, fast wavelet transforms in functions, and modern com- numerical analysis. Among them, the development of puter science to reduce the FMM, a mathematical technique jointly developed with computational cost associated Vladimir Rokhlin Leslie Greengard, Silver Professor of Mathematics and with the basic integral opera- Computer Science at , has revolu- tors of mathematical physics. tionised the way engineers and scientists solve tough problems. Rokhlin has been at the centre of several break- throughs in numerical analysis and applied mathemat- The William Benter Prize in Applied Mathematics, a bi- ics. His work has fundamentally changed these disci- ennial award that carries a cash prize of US$100,000, plines and the ramifications of his breakthroughs will was set up by the Liu Bie Ju Centre for Mathematical certainly take decades to be worked out. He has made Sciences (LBJ Centre) at CityU in 2010, to recognise out- several deep contributions to the solutions of integral standing mathematical contributions that have a direct equations, and this has had a great impact on scientific and fundamental impact on scientific, business, finance computation. and engineering applications. Rokhlin is the inventor and “leading exponent” of The Prize was presented to Vladimir Rokhlin at the many fast mathematical algorithms for solving bound- opening ceremony of the International Conference on ary value problems associated with the key differential Applied Mathematics 2014 organized by the LBJ Centre equations of mathematical physics. Specifically, he is at CityU on 1 December 2014. the originator of a family of computational schemes known as “Fast Multipole Methods” or simply “FMMs”, Biographical Sketch which, by virtue of their computational efficiency, have Vladimir Rokhlin was born on 4 August 1952 at Voro- revolutionized how scientists and engineers simulate nezh, Russia. He received his Master of Science degree physical phenomena ranging from gravitational interac- in mathematics from the University of Vilnius in Lithu- tions to biomolecular dynamics and electromagnetic ania in 1973, and doctorate in Applied Mathematics at fields and waves. Rice University in Houston, Texas in 1983. From 1979 to 1985, he was a Senior Research Specialist at Exxon The impact of Vladimir Rokhlin’s collective body Production Research Company in Houston, Texas. He of work is immeasurable. Today, iterative and direct joined the in 1985, where he is now Pro- solvers incorporating his high-order accurate FMMs are fessor of Mathematics and Arthur K. Watson Professor used by scientists and engineers to rapidly solve inte- in Computer Science. gral equations pertinent to the analysis of many body and boundary value problems with accuracies hitherto Vladimir Rokhlin has received many awards and unachievable through any other method. In many fields, honours for his achievements and contributions over FMMs have enabled high-fidelity simulations of a scale the years. He is Member of the US National Academy previously thought impossible (often involving billions of Sciences and Member of the US National Academy of densely coupled unknowns), led to new scientific of Engineering. He and Leslie Greengard received the and engineering breakthroughs, and evolved into the 2001 Leroy P. Steele Prize for a Seminal Contribution to dominant simulation technique (often supplanting old Research. He is the recipient of the 2001 Rice University and deeply engrained methods). Distinguished Alumnus Award, and the 2011 Maxwell Prize from the International Council for Industrial and — News release from City University of Hong Kong

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