John M. Ball
Sir John Macleod Ball FRSE FRS ( often cited as John M. Ball, born May 19, 1948 in Farnham, Surrey ) is a British mathematician who is engaged in applied mathematics and calculus.
Ball studied 1966-1969 at Cambridge University (St. John 's College ) and in 1969 at the School of Applied Sciences, University of Sussex, where he received his doctorate with David Edmunds in 1972. Subsequently he was a Post- Doc 1972-1974 at Heriot - Watt University and the Lefschetz Center for Dynamical Systems at Brown University. From 1974 he was a lecturer at Heriot -Watt University, from 1978 Reader and from 1982 Professor of Applied Analysis. 1980-1985 he was a Senior Fellow of the Science and Engineering Research Council. Since 1996 he has Seidleian Professor of Natural Philosophy at Oxford University and Fellow of Queen 's College. He has been a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley ( 1983/84 ), the Institute for Advanced Study ( 1993/94, 2002/2003), several times at the University of Paris VI ( Laboratory of Computational Mathematics ), the Tata Institute of fundamental Research (2001), in Montpellier, Santiago de Chile, Crete.
Ball is concerned among other things with nonlinear partial differential equations and the calculus of variations and applications in continuum mechanics and nonlinear elasticity theory, including modeling of the microstructure in the material sciences. A recent research area is the mathematics of liquid crystals. He made major contributions to the calculus of variations by generalizations of convexity: quasiconvex and polyconvex It led functions that make it possible to treat physically meaningful energy functionals in the static elasticity theory mathematically.
Since 1998, he has an honorary professorship from Heriot -Watt University. He is the editor of Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysis. He is since 1980 a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, whose Keith Price in 1990 he and the Royal Medal he received in 1996, and since 1989 of the Royal Society. In 1982 he received the Whittaker Prize of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society. He is a member of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, the Istituto Lombardo, the Academia Europaea and a foreign member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Sciences ( 2000). 1989/90 he was president of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society. He was in the Council of the Weizmann Institute and the London Mathematical Society, which he was president from 1996 to 1998. 1998/99 he was president of the Mathematics Department of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He was on the committee for the first Abel Prize in 2002 and the Fields Medal in 1998. 2003 to 2006 he was president of the International Mathematical Union.
In 1982 he received the Junior Whitehead Prize. In 1999 he received the Theodore von Kármán Prize of the SIAM. In 1995 he was awarded the Naylor Prize of the London Mathematical Society and in 2003 the David Crighton Medal. He is a multiple honorary doctorates (Montpellier, Sussex, Edinburgh, Heriot -Watt, EPFL Lausanne). In 1983 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Warsaw (Energy Minimizing conditions in nonlinear elasticity ).
In 2006 he was knighted.
His doctoral include Gero Friesecke and Stefan Müller.
Ball with originating from Tibet actress Sedhar Chozam (Lady Sedhar Ball) married and has three children.
In 2009 he received the Sylvester Medal of the Royal Society for his seminal work in mechanics and nonlinear analysis and his encouragement of mathematical research in Developing countries. In 2012 he was John von Neumann Lecturer. He is a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
In October 2011, he was elected to the board of the International Council for Science ( ICSU ).