Nancy Kopell

Nancy Kopell ( born November 8, 1942 in New York City ) is an American mathematician, the differential equations and their applications employed in biology.

Kopell studied at Cornell University (Bachelor 1963) and in 1967 at the University of California, Berkeley, with Stephen Smale doctorate ( Commuting diffeomorphisms ). Then it was Moore Instructor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and was in 1969 at Northeastern University, where she received a full professorship in 1978. Since 1986 she is a professor at Boston University. She was a guest researcher at the CNRS (1970 ), MIT ( 1975-1977 ) and at Caltech (1976). At Boston University, she is co-director of the Center for Biodynamics.

Kopell was Guggenheim and Sloan Fellow. In 1983 she was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM ) ( Forced and coupled oscillators in biological applications ) and 2002 on the ICM in Beijing ( Rhythms of the nervous system: mathematical themes and variations ). In 1990 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship ( the so-called Genius Award). She was Kac Memorial Lecturer at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. She was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences in 1996. In 1992, she was Noether Lecturer and 2007 John von Neumann Lecturer.

Kopell examined pattern formation in oscillating chemical reactions and the formation of bio-dynamic rhythms in neural networks and in the coordination of movements of living beings. They use methods of dynamical systems theory as the theory of averages, singular perturbation theory, theory of invariant manifolds. She works closely with biologists.

Writings

• We got rhythm: Dynamical Systems of the Nervous System, Notices AMS, January 2000