Pierre van Moerbeke

Pierre van Moerbeke (born October 1, 1944 in Leuven ) is a Belgian mathematician.

Van Moerbeke studied mathematics at the Catholic University of Leuven (UCL, licentiate 1966) and received his doctorate in 1972 at Rockefeller University (where he was from 1969 to 1972) with Henry McKean . In 1977 he also received his PhD in Sociology from UCL. In 1973/74 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study . In 1974 he was associate professor at Stanford University , from 1975 to 1978 professor at the University of Paris-Süd and 1977/78 visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley . He was a professor at UCL from 1972 and also from 1979 (each for the spring semester) at Brandeis University .

Van Moerbeke dealt with soliton solutions of nonlinear differential equations and integrable systems, for example with the periodic Toda lattice (with Mark Kac from Rockefeller University) and Hill's differential equation (with McKean), geodetic flows on groups and various gyro problems. He often worked with Mark Adler (Brandeis University). They investigated connections of integrable systems with Lie algebras (and Kac-Moody algebras, infinitely dimensional Lie algebras) and algebraic geometry. In doing so, van Moerbeke also followed up on classic works from the 19th century ( Carl Gustav Jacobi , Sofia Kowalewskaja , Paul Painlevé ), in which the theory of integrable systems had a climax before it was revived in the 1960s through the discovery of exactly integrable soliton solutions . Together with Adler, he completed Kowalewskaja's proof of the algebraically integrable cases of gyroscopic motion and embedded this in a general theory of algebraically integrable systems of differential equations in the complex. In addition, he investigated connections between integrable systems and random matrices , random permutations and various problems of random paths ( random walk ).

In 1988 he received the Francqui Prize in Belgium. He was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Warsaw in 1983 ( Algebraic complete integrability of Hamiltonian systems and Kac-Moody-Lie algebras ).

Fonts

• with Mark Adler, Pol Vanhaecke Algebraic integrability, Painlevé Geometry and Lie Algebras , Springer 2004.
• with Ludwig Faddejew , Franklin Lambert (editor) Bilinear integrable systems: from classical to quantum, continuous to discrete , Proc. NATO Advanced Research Workshop, Springer 2006.

Web links

• Homepage in Leuven
• List of publications 2010, pdf
• Homepage in Brandeis

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kac, van Moerbeke A complete solution of the periodic Toda problem , Proc. Nat. Acad., Volume 72, 1975, p. 2879
2. ^ McKean, van Moerbeke The spectrum of Hill's equation , Inventiones Mathematicae, Volume 30, 1975, pp. 217-274
3. ^ Adler, van Moerbeke The complex geometry of the Kovalevsky-Painlevé analysis , Inv. Math., Vol. 97, 1989, pp. 3-51
4. ↑ Awarding of the Francqui Prize to van Moerbeke ( Memento of the original from 23 August 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.