Person: Franca, Leopoldo
Leopoldo Franca was a Brazilian mathematician who had a major impact in the development and analysis of innovative finite element methods. He worked mainly on stabilised methods for fluids, acoustics and solids, residual-free methods, and enriched methods for transport equations.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Franca began his studies at the Pontifical Catholic University in 1977 and was awarded his B.S. in mechanical engineering in 1981.
- Franca had been awarded a CAPES fellowship to support his Master's Degree which he was awarded in 1983.
- After the award of his Master's Degree, Franca wished to continue to study for a Ph.D. supported by CAPES and was able to undertake research at Stanford University in California, USA.
- At Stanford University, Franca's studies were supervised by Thomas Joseph Robert Hughes (born 1943).
- Before the award of his Ph.D., Franca had over ten papers in print.
- These included Franca's thesis advisor Thomas J R Hughes and Michel Mallet, Marc Balestra, Isaac Harari, together with the Brazilian post-doctoral student Abimael Fernando Dourado Loula who had been awarded his doctorate by the Federal University in Rio de Janeiro in 1979.
- Franca's first papers include: (i) T J R Hughes, L P Franca and M Balestra, A New Finite Element Formulation for Computational Fluid Dynamics: V.
- Circumventing the Babuska-Brezzi Condition: A Stable Petrov-Galerkin Formulation of the Stokes Problem Accommodating Equal-Order Interpolations (1986); and (ii) T J R Hughes, L P Franca and M Mallet, A New Finite Element for Computational Fluid Dynamics: I.
- Franca was awarded a Ph.D. in 1987 for his thesis New Mixed Finite Element Methods.
- After the award of his doctorate, Franca spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Stanford in the United States.
- From 1988 to 1993 Franca worked in the National Laboratory for Scientific Computing at the Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics of the Ministério da Ciência e Tecnologia.
- Ulisses Mello, engineer and associate director at IBM Research, Brazil, led the Smarter Natural Resources & Discovery strategic group and it was this group that Franca joined as a senior research scientist.
- While working for IBM, Franca was one of six members of staff who applied for a patent for Method to assess the impact of existing fractures and faults for reservoir management on 9 November 2012.
- Sadly Franca had died two months before the application for the patent was filed.
- During his career, Franca received many awards.
- A search today (August 2022) of the Web of Science Index shows that Leopoldo P Franca is cited 7242 times.
- Franca died suddenly following a heart attack in September 2012 at the age of 53.
Born 7 April 1959, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Died 19 September 2012, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Origin Brazil
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
