E. Brian Davies
Edward Brian Davies (born June 13, 1944 in Cardiff ) is a British mathematician.
Davies attended school in Wales , where his father was a math teacher. He studied at Oxford University , where he graduated in 1965 and received his doctorate from David Edwards in 1968 (Some problems in functional analysis). He also received the University's Senior Mathematics Prize. In 1968/69 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , before returning to Oxford University as a Tutorial Fellow (St. John's College) and from 1973 as a University Lecturer . From 1981 he was a professor at King's College London , where he headed the Faculty of Mathematics from 1990 to 1993, became a fellow of King's College in 1996 and retired in 2010.
He is best known for his work on spectral theory with applications in quantum mechanics and, among other things, dealt with non-self-adjoint operators, eigenvalues of graphs and elliptic partial differential operators. But he also deals with the history of science and the philosophy of science and has written popular science books. In Science through the looking glass he turns against a Platonic view of mathematics and expresses himself skeptical about using mathematical methods to achieve a complete understanding of nature or the human environment.
He was the founding editor of the London Mathematical Society Student Texts from 1983 to 1990 and founded the Journal of Spectral Theory of the European Mathematical Society in 2010. In 1995 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society . In 1998 he received the Senior Berwick Prize of the London Mathematical Society , of which he was President from 2008 to 2009.
In 2010 he gave the Gauss lecture (Platonism in Science and Mathematics), in 2011 he was awarded the Pólya Prize .
Fonts
- Quantum theory of open systems , Academic Press 1976
- One Parameter Semi-Groups , Academic Press, London Mathematical Society Monographs, 1980
- Heat kernels and spectral theory , Cambridge Tracts in Mathematics, Volume 92, Cambridge University Press 1989
- Spectral theory and differential operators , Cambridge University Press 1995
- with Y. Safarev Spectral theory and geometry , London Mathematical Society Lecture Notes, Volume 273, Cambridge University Press 1999
- Linear operators and their spectra , Cambridge University Press 2007
- Science in the looking glass: what do we really know? , Oxford University Press 2003
- Why Beliefs matter , Oxford University Press 2010
Web links
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Davies, E. Brian |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Davies, Edward Brian (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British mathematician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 13, 1944 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Cardiff |