Peter Lax

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Peter David Lax (born May 1, 1926, Budapest, Hungary) is a highly-respected mathematician working in the areas of pure and applied mathematics. He has made important contributions to integrable systems, fluid dynamics and shock waves, solitonic physics, hyperbolic conservation laws, and mathematical and scientific computing, among other fields.

Lax was born in Budapest, Hungary, and moved with his parents to the United States in 1941.

Lax holds a faculty position in the Department of Mathematics, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University.

He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1986, the Wolf Prize in 1987 and the Abel Prize in 2005.

He is an alumnus of New York University, where he received both his bachelor's degree in 1947 and his Ph.D in 1949 with thesis advisor Kurt O. Friedrichs.

[edit] Books

• Functional Analysis
• Linear Algebra
• Scattering Theory for Automorphic Functions
• Calculus with Applications and Computing
• Hyperbolic Systems of Conservation Laws and the Mathematical Theory of Shock Waves
• Recent Advances in Partial Differential Equations
• Mathematical Aspects of Production and Distribution of Energy
• Scattering Theory
• Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations in Applied Science

[edit] External links

• Peter David Lax from the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• O'Connor, John J., and Edmund F. Robertson. "Peter Lax". MacTutor History of Mathematics archive.
• Elements from his contributions to mathematics. Popularised presentation of Peter Lax by Helge Holden, published on the Abel Prize website.
• Abel Prize press release and biography
• NY Times Interview 3 29 05

Abel laureates

2003: Serre | 2004: Atiyah • Singer | 2005: Lax | 2006: Carleson | 2007: Varadhan edit