Person: Babuska, Ivo Milan
Ivo Babuska is a Czech mathematician who works in America and is noted for his work on the finite element method.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Babuska was thirteen years old at this time and most of his secondary education, therefore, took place under German occupation.
- Babuska studied civil engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague and was awarded a Dipl.
- However, simultaneously with this research in engineering, Babuska was a mathematics student at the Central Mathematical Institute in Prague studying under Vladimir Knichal.
- While Babuska was studying at the Institute, its name changed in 1953 to the Mathematical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.
- In 1955 Babuska was awarded his Candidate's degree (equivalent to a Ph.D.).
- Given Babuska's training, coming first to engineering and, slightly later to mathematics, it is no surprise to see his publications being in the engineering area but become more slanted towards advanced mathematical techniques to solve engineering problems.
- Basically, the mathematical problem Babuska's group had to solve was to find a numerical solution to a nonlinear partial differential equation.
- In 1955, after the award of his doctorate, Babuska was appointed as head of the Department of Constructive Methods of Mathematical Analysis of the Mathematical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.
- In the following year, 1956, Babuska founded the journal Applications of Mathematics (Applikace Matematiky).
- In 1960 Babuska was awarded a Dr Sc. (the highest possible degree in Czechoslovakia, equivalent to a D.Sc.) by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.
- Mathematics was allowed to develop without interference, however, and the applied and computational methods developed by Babuska found favour.
- After coming to the United States, Babuska became the world-leading expert in finite element analysis.
- In his landmark paper in 1971, Ivo introduced the discrete inf-sup condition, generalizing the results of J Cea and R Varga, and setting the theoretical framework for stability and convergence analysis of arbitrary linear problems.
- Ivo has had a unique ability to foresee the development of the field of finite elements.
- In the late seventies, Barna Szabo convinced Ivo to reexamine the then established concept of higher order methods, and the p-version of the Finite Element Method was born.
- In 2001, in collaboration with Theofanis Strouboulis, Babuska published The finite element method and its reliability.
- Babuska, with Ivan Hlavácek and Jan Chleboun, published Uncertain input data problems and the worst scenario method in 2004.
- Among the many other services to mathematics which Babuska has given, we mention the many journals which have benefited by his accepting a position on their editorial board: Communications in Applied Analysis; Communications in Numerical Methods in Engineering; Computer & Mathematics; Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering; Computers and Structures; Communications in Applied Analysis; International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering; Modelling and Scientific Computing; Numerical Mathematics - A Journal of Chinese Universities; Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations; and Siberian Journal of Computer Mathematics.
- The International Astronomical Union named asteroid No. 36030 "Babuska" in his honour in 2002.
Born 22 March 1926, Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic).
View full biography at MacTutor
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Origin Czech Republic
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
