Mary Wheeler

Mary Fanett Wheeler ( born December 28, 1938 in Cuero, Texas) is an American mathematician.

Life

Wheeler studied pharmacy and then wanted to be a lawyer, but moved to the University of Texas to mathematics and made 1960 her bachelor's degree in social sciences and mathematics. In 1963 she received her master's degree and in 1971 she was at Rice University in Henry Rachford doctorate (A priori error estimates for Galerkin approximations to parabolic partial differential equations ), where she had now started a family and had a daughter. After the graduation, she taught at Rice University, where she Noah Harding Professor for Computational and Applied Mathematics in 1988. She was also a visiting professor at the University of Houston.

Work

Wheeler is concerned with numerical algorithms for partial differential equations, it applies also, for example, in matters of geotechnics and environmental and oil industries. Her research focuses on the modeling of flows in porous media as an application to improve methods for oil recovery or to simulate the dispersion of pollutants in groundwater. Her husband was an engineer at Exxon and with this she was at the restoration projects in the Chesapeake Bay, the Delaware Bay and participates in Florida. She has published over 200 papers and is the co-editor of seven books. She was co-editor of several SIAM journals and has been active in SIAM committees.

In 1989, she was Noether Lecturer. In 2010 she was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Hyderabad ( Role of computational science in protecting the environment: Geological storage of CO2). In 2009 she received the Theodore von Kármán Prize.