Oscar Lanford

Oscar Erasmus Lanford III, often cited as Oscar E. Lanford III, ( born January 6, 1940 in New York City; † November 16, 2013 ) is an American mathematician and mathematical physicist.

Lanford attended Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. in 1966 from Princeton University with Arthur Wightman ( Construction of Quantum Fields Interacting by a cut-off Yukawa coupling ). After that, he was from 1966, first as Assistant Professor and later. Professor at the University of California, Berkeley From 1982 he was professor of physics at the IHES in Paris. From 1987 he was professor at the ETH Zurich. Since 2005 he is Professor Emeritus at the ETH. In 1970 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Lanford worked in mathematical physics first in Constructive Quantum Field Theory, then in statistical physics and dynamical systems theory. In particular, he used renormalization group methods in computer- aided analysis of dynamic systems, as in the proof of the Feigenbaum conjectures in the Feigenbaum scenario ..

In 1976 he proved the validity of the Boltzmann equation for a classical gas of stray bullets, but his proof is valid only for very short times.

He holds an honorary doctorate from Wesleyan University and received the 1986 Award of the National Academy of Sciences of Applied Mathematics and Numerical Analysis. He was invited speaker at the ICM 1986 ( computer assisted proofs in analysis) and in 1974 in Vancouver (Time evolution of infinite classical systems). 1969 and 1971 he was Sloan Fellow. He is a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.