Larry Schumaker Named SIAM Fellow
Stevenson Professor Larry Schumaker has been named a 2013 Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). He is one of only 33 mathematicians named as SIAM Fellows this year.
The SIAM Fellows program honors members who are recognized by their peers as distinguished for their contributions to the discipline. Schumaker was selected for his work on the theory and applications of spline functions, geometric design, and finite elements.
Schumaker has been working with spline functions since their emergence in the 1960s and has made significant contributions to the field. Also known as piecewise polynomial functions, spline functions approximate the shape of complex curves and surfaces. They have extensive applications in a wide range of areas in science and engineering, including computer-aided geometric design, data fitting, image and signal processing,? and numerical solution of PDEs.
Schumaker has authored two books on spline functions and has published numerous papers on the subject.? He has also translated four books, and was coeditor of thirty-eight conference proceedings. ?In recognition of his work in this area, he was also selected as the inaugural speaker for the Mathematical Association of America?s Distinguished Lecture Series in 2007. He delivered a talk entitled ?Spline Functions and Their Impact.?
Schumaker received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1966, and joined the Vanderbilt Department of Mathematics faculty in 1988. He is a recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Prize and is a Foreign Member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.