John M. Ball
Sir John Macleod Ball FRSE FRS (often cited as John M. Ball ; born May 19, 1948 in Farnham, County Surrey ) is a British mathematician engaged in applied mathematics and analysis.
Ball studied from 1966 to 1969 at Cambridge University (St. John's College) and from 1969 at the School of Applied Sciences at the University of Sussex , where he received his doctorate in 1972 under David Edmunds . He then worked as a post-doc from 1972 to 1974 at Heriot-Watt University and at the Lefschetz Center for Dynamical Systems at Brown University . From 1974 he was a lecturer at Heriot-Watt University, from 1978 reader and from 1982 professor for applied analysis. 1980 to 1985 he was a Senior Fellow of the Science and Engineering Research Council. Since 1996 he has been the Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy at Oxford University and a Fellow of Queen's College. Among other things, he was visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley (1983/84), the Institute for Advanced Study (1993/94, 2002/2003), several times at the University of Paris VI (Laboratory for Numerical Mathematics), the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (2001), in Montpellier , Santiago de Chile , Crete .
Ball deals, among other things, with nonlinear partial differential equations and the calculus of variations and applications in continuum mechanics and nonlinear elasticity theory including modeling of the microstructure in materials science . A more recent research area is the mathematics of liquid crystals . He made significant contributions to the calculus of variations through generalizations of the concept of convexity : He introduced quasi-convex and polyconvex functions that make it possible to mathematically treat physically meaningful energy functional in the static theory of elasticity.
He is the editor of the Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysis. He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh since 1980 , the Keith Prize of which he received in 1990 and the Royal Medal of 1996, and of the Royal Society since 1989 . He is a member of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, the Istituto Lombardo, the Academia Europaea and an external member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Sciences (2000). In 1989/90 he was President of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society. He was on the council of the Weizmann Institute and the London Mathematical Society, of which he was president from 1996 to 1998. In 1998/99 he was President of the Mathematics Department of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2003/04 he was on the first Abel Prize Committee for the first Abel Prize in 2003. He was also on the Committee for the Fields Medal in 1998. From 2003 to 2006 he was President of the International Mathematical Union . In 2006 he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor . In October 2011 he was elected to the board of the International Council for Science (ICSU). In 2012 he became John von Neumann Lecturer . He is a fellow of the American Mathematical Society .
In 1982 he received the Whittaker Prize of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society and also the Junior Whitehead Prize in 1982 , the Naylor Prize of the London Mathematical Society in 1995 , the Theodore von Kármán Prize of the SIAM in 1999 and the David Crighton Medal in 2003 (first prize winner). In 2009 he received the Royal Society's Sylvester Medal for his seminal work in mechanics and nonlinear analysis and his encouragement of mathematical research in developing countries. For 2018 he was awarded the King Faisal International Prize in Mathematics. In the laudation, fundamental contributions and "revolutionary" new approaches to nonlinear partial differential equations, calculus of variations and dynamic systems with applications in materials science, liquid crystals, phase transitions and nonlinear elasticity were highlighted.
He has multiple honorary doctorates (Montpellier, Sussex, Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt, EPFL Lausanne). In 1983 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Warsaw (Energy minimizing conditions in nonlinear elasticity). From 1998 he has been an honorary professor at Heriot-Watt University.
His doctoral students include Gero Friesecke and Stefan Müller .
Ball is married to the Tibetan actress Sedhar Chozam (Lady Sedhar Ball) and has three children.
Web links
- Homepage
- Literature by and about John M. Ball in the catalog of the German National Library
- John M. Ball in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)
- Page about ball at researchgate.net
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ball, John M. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Ball, John Macleod |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British mathematician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 19, 1948 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Farnham , Surrey |