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Nick Trefethen


Nick Trethen is a world well-known computational scientist and my good good friend.

Contents

Serra Home

I first met Nick in 1978 at Stanford’s Serra Home. Serra Home was inbuilt 1923 to be the retirement house for President David Starr Jordan. By the late 1970’s it had been assigned to the Laptop Science Division and housed the Numerical Evaluation group. Professors George Forsythe and Gene Golub had their places of work there at one time or one other, as did varied grad college students, put up docs, and guests.

There was a stunning patio, a volleyball courtroom and an actual feeling of camaraderie within the Serra Home group. Within the educational 12 months 1978/79 a very robust group of grad research had been working in Serra Home. Nick Trefethen was one in all them. Marsha Berger, Michael Overton and Randy LeVeque had been others.

In 1978/79 Gene Golub was away from Stanford on sabbatical and I took his place for the 12 months. I taught the graduate numerical evaluation course and used my new Fortran “matrix laboratory”. It was only a primitive matrix calculator. It was not spectacular numerical evaluation nor spectacular pc science.

Nick and Randy had been enrolled in that course and Marsha and Michael sat in typically. This was their first publicity to MATLAB. It must turn into a extra mature device earlier than they might discover it helpful. Just a few grad college students from engineering additionally took my course and located that primitive MATLAB helpful for work in areas like management principle and sign processing, areas that I knew nothing about on the time. That ultimately led to Jack Little and to MathWorks.

Nick

https://www.henkvandervorst.nl/computing.html

Linocut by Henk van der Vorst.

Nick is a famend scholar of computational arithmetic. His curriculum vitae offers a listing of his achievements. He has authored eight books, revealed a whole bunch of journal articles and written dozens of essays, He’s a fellow of the US Nationwide Academy of Engineering and the British Royal Society. He served as president of SIAM and as editor and affiliate editor for numerous journals.

Here’s a pattern of some of his achievements.

Tutorial Profession

Nick acquired his Stanford Ph.D.in 1982. His thesis supervisor was Joe Oliger. From 1982 to 1997 he was on the school of NYU, MIT and Cornell.

In 1997, he moved to Oxford College to succeed Leslie Fox as Professor of Numerical Evaluation and Fellow of Balliol School. Nick’s essay An American at Oxford is fascinating.

Wilkinson

Nick gave this discuss Jim Wilkinson in 1979.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOMrRn2tdCs

sixtieth Birthday

A convention for Nick’s birthday as held in 2015 in Oxford’s new Andrew Wiles Constructing. That is Andre Weideman within the entrance row with Nick and me.

https://blogs.mathworks.com/cleve/2015/09/07/trip-report-trefethen-birthday-conference

Chebfun

Chebfun is a strong system for coping with capabilities and operators in the identical means MATLAB offers with vectors and matrices. The web page: https://www.chebfun.org.

The brand:

The unique authors, Nick, Toby Driscoll, Ricardo Pachón and Rodrigo Platte:

100 Digits

In 2002, Nick specified ten issues, every with a numerical answer. He provided a $100 prize to whoever produced essentially the most correct options, measured as much as ten important digits. In the end twenty groups solved the entire issues completely. An nameless donor aided in producing the required prize cash. The problem and its options had been described intimately by Folkmar Bornemann, Dirk Laurie, Stan Wagon and Jörg Waldvogel in

The SIAM 100-Digit Problem.

One of many issues is to seek out the worldwide minimal of

f = @(x,y) exp(sin(50*x)) + sin(60*exp(y)) + sin(70*sin(x)) + sin(sin(80*y)) - sin(10*(x+y)) + (x.^2+y.^2)./4;

Here’s a surf plot of f(x,y).

Lightning Laplace Solver

The Lightning Laplace Solver is a MATLAB code that solves the Laplace equation on a polygon.

https://individuals.maths.ox.ac.uk/trefethen/lightning.html

AAA

AAA is a brand new algorithm for rational approximation. The title AAA stands for “adaptive Antoulas-Anderson” in honor of the authors who launched the concept.

https://individuals.maths.ox.ac.uk/trefethen/AAAfinal.pdf

Physique-Mass Index

In 2013 Nick wrote this one-page notice proposing a substitute for the usual Physique-Mass Index, which is extensively used to evaluate weight problems.

https://individuals.maths.ox.ac.uk/trefethen/bmi.pdf

Index Playing cards

Nick writes:

For a few years, since 1970 the truth is, I’ve been writing notes on
social, mathematical, and different topics, which I retailer on index
playing cards. A set of a number of hundred of those notes was
revealed … as Trefethen’s Index Playing cards: Forty Years of Notes
about Individuals, Phrases and Arithmetic (World Scientific, 2011).

See: https://trefethen.web

Harvard

In 2023, Nick returned to Harvard, the place he had been an undergraduate fifty years earlier. (Invoice Gates was in the identical class.) This time round, Nick is Professor of Utilized Arithmetic in Residence on the Harvard John A. Paulson Faculty of Engineering and Utilized Sciences (SEAS). The announcement: Trefethen Returns to Harvard.

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Get
the MATLAB code (requires JavaScript)

Printed with MATLAB® R2024b

<!–
6237f425ad814a85b9d646ecc0a0160b ##### SOURCE BEGIN #####
%% Nick Trefethen
% Nick Trethen is a world well-known computational scientist and my good
% good friend.
%
% <>
%

%% Serra Home
% I first met Nick in 1978 at Stanford’s Serra Home.
% Serra Home was inbuilt 1923 to be the
% retirement house for President David Starr Jordan. By the late 1970’s
% it had been assigned to the Laptop Science Division and housed
% the Numerical Evaluation group. Professors George Forsythe and
% Gene Golub had their places of work there at one time or one other,
% as did varied grad college students, put up docs, and guests.
%
% There was a stunning patio, a volleyball courtroom and a
% actual feeling of camaraderie within the Serra Home group.
% Within the educational 12 months 1978/79 a very robust group of grad
% research had been working in Serra Home. Nick Trefethen was one in all them.
% Marsha Berger, Michael Overton and Randy LeVeque had been others.
%
% In 1978/79 Gene Golub was away from Stanford on sabbatical and I took
% his place for the 12 months.
% I taught the graduate numerical evaluation course and used my new Fortran
% .
% It was only a primitive matrix calculator.
% It was not spectacular numerical evaluation nor spectacular
% pc science.
%
% Nick and Randy had been enrolled in that course and
% Marsha and Michael sat in typically. This was their first publicity
% to MATLAB. It must turn into a extra mature device earlier than they
% would discover it helpful. Just a few grad college students from engineering additionally
% took my course and located that primitive MATLAB helpful for work
% in areas like management principle and sign processing, areas that I knew
% nothing about on the time. That ultimately led to Jack Little and
% to MathWorks.

%% Nick
%
% <>
%
%
%
% Linocut by Henk van der Vorst.
%
% Nick is a famend scholar of computational arithmetic.
% His
% offers a listing of his achievements.
% He has authored eight books, revealed a whole bunch of journal articles
% and written dozens of essays,
% He’s a fellow of the US Nationwide Academy of Engineering and
% the British Royal Society. He served as president of SIAM and as
% editor and affiliate editor for numerous journals.
%
% Here’s a pattern of some of his achievements.
%

%% Tutorial Profession
% Nick acquired his Stanford Ph.D.in 1982. His thesis supervisor
% was Joe Oliger. From 1982 to 1997 he was on the school
% of NYU, MIT and Cornell.
%
% In 1997, he moved to Oxford College to succeed
% as
% Professor of Numerical Evaluation and Fellow of Balliol School.
% Nick’s essay
% is fascinating.
%

%% Wilkinson
% Nick gave this discuss Jim Wilkinson in 1979.
%
%
%

%% sixtieth Birthday
% A convention for Nick’s birthday as held in 2015 in Oxford’s
% new Andrew Wiles Constructing. That is Andre Weideman within the entrance row
% with Nick and me.
%
%
%
% <>
%

%% Chebfun
% Chebfun is a strong system for coping with capabilities and operators
% in the identical means MATLAB offers with vectors and matrices.
% The web page: .
%
% The brand:
%
% <>
%
% The unique authors, Nick, Toby Driscoll, Ricardo Pachón and
% Rodrigo Platte:
%
% <>
%

%% 100 Digits
% In 2002, Nick specified ten issues, every with a numerical answer.
% He provided a $100 prize to whoever produced essentially the most correct
% options, measured as much as ten important digits. In the end
% twenty groups solved the entire issues completely. An nameless
% donor aided in producing the required prize cash.
% The problem and its options had been described intimately by
% Folkmar Bornemann, Dirk Laurie, Stan Wagon and Jörg Waldvogel in
%
% .
%
% One of many issues is to seek out the worldwide minimal of
%
% |f = @(x,y) exp(sin(50*x)) + sin(60*exp(y)) + sin(70*sin(x)) +
% sin(sin(80*y)) – sin(10*(x+y)) + (x.^2+y.^2)./4;|
%
% Here’s a |surf| plot of |f(x,y)|.
%
% <>
%

%% Lightning Laplace Solver
%
% <>
%
% The Lightning Laplace Solver is a MATLAB code that solves the
% Laplace equation on a polygon.
%
%
%

%% AAA
% AAA is a brand new algorithm for rational approximation.
% The title AAA stands for “adaptive Antoulas-Anderson”
% in honor of the authors who launched the concept.
%
%
%

%% Physique-Mass Index
% In 2013 Nick wrote this one-page notice proposing another
% to the usual Physique-Mass Index, which is extensively used to evaluate
% weight problems.
%
%

%% Index Playing cards
% Nick writes:
%
%
%

% For a few years, since 1970 the truth is, I’ve been writing notes on
% social, mathematical, and different topics, which I retailer on index
% playing cards. A set of a number of hundred of those notes was
% revealed … as Trefethen’s Index Playing cards: Forty Years of Notes
% about Individuals, Phrases and Arithmetic (World Scientific, 2011).
%

%
%
% See:
%

%% Harvard
% In 2023, Nick returned to Harvard, the place he had been an undergraduate
% fifty years earlier. (Invoice Gates was in the identical class.)
% This time round, Nick is Professor of Utilized Arithmetic in Residence
% on the Harvard John A. Paulson Faculty of Engineering and Utilized
% Sciences (SEAS).
% The announcement:
% .
%
% <>
%
##### SOURCE END ##### 6237f425ad814a85b9d646ecc0a0160b
–>

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