Leslie Greengard

Leslie F. Greengard (born 1958 in London) is an American mathematician who deals with numerical analysis.

Life and work

Leslie Greengard is the son of Nobel laureate Paul Greengard, grew up in New York, Boston, and New Haven and attended Wesleyan University ( Bachelor in Mathematics 1979) and Yale University, where he graduated as a medical doctor (MD) made ​​in 1987 and in received his doctorate in the same year at Vladimir Rokhlin in computer science (The rapid evaluation of potential fields in particle systems). 1987 to 1989 he was National Science Research Fellow at Yale. Since 1989 he has been at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University, where he is currently Professor and where he was director.

Greengard, the 1987 " Fast Multipole Method " invented together with Vladimir Rokhlin, which allowed for a significant acceleration of the numerical solution of the Laplace equation, with applications, in particular in problems of electrodynamics and gravitation ( Astrophysics ) the problem of many interacting particles. He is also working on other fast algorithms eg in the diffusion (Fast Gauss Transform).

In 2001 he received the Leroy P. Steele with Rokhlin Prize. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. In addition to the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation, he was also Packard Foundation Fellow.

Writings

• Vladimir Rokhlin A fast algorithm for particle simulations, Journal of computational physics, Bd.73, 1987, p.325 (fast multipole method)