Richard A. Tapia

Richard Alfred Tapia (born March 25, 1939 in Santa Monica , California ) is an American mathematician who deals with mathematical optimization and numerical algorithms.

Tapia, who grew up in Los Angeles , received his bachelor's degree in 1961 and (interrupted by two years of work in industry) his master's degree in mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1966, where he worked with Magnus Hestenes in 1967 PhD ( A generalization of Newton's method with application to the Euler-Lagrange-Equation ). In 1968 he became an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and in 1970 at Rice University in Houston , where he was promoted to associate professor in 1972 and a full professorship in 1976. From 1991 he was Noah Harding Professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics and from 2005 Maxfield and Oshman Professor of Engineering and also received the title of University Professor at Rice University, the university's highest academic rank. There he is also Associate Director of Graduate Studies and Director of the Center for Excellence and Equity in Education , where he worked intensively on the advancement of minorities (ethnic minorities, women). His Rice University program put the university at the forefront of national leadership in promoting minorities in applied mathematics and engineering . Tapia is herself the son of immigrants from Mexico . From 1978 to 1983 he was the math faculty at Rice University. In the 1980s he was also adjunct professor at Baylor College of Medicine and from 2000 at the University of Houston .

Tapia has been dealing with optimization tasks and algorithms for solving them since his dissertation . In particular, he dealt in the 1970s with the Newton method and its variants and their extension to optimization problems with constraints such as eigenvalue problems . In the 1990s he dealt in particular with internal points procedures .

In 1996 he was appointed to the National Science Board by US President Bill Clinton , where he was until 2002. From 2001 to 2004 he chaired the Board of Higher Education and the Workforce of the National Research Council . In 2010 he received the National Medal of Science and in 1992 he became a member of the National Academy of Engineering ( becoming the first American with a Hispanic background). In 2004 he received the Distinguished Service Award from SIAM . He is an honorary doctor from Carnegie Mellon University and the Colorado School of Mines . In 2013, Tapia was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 2014 he received the Vannevar Bush Award .

In his spare time he restores vintage cars and drove dragster races in the 1960s . He also lectured on the application of mathematical principles to car racing.

Fonts

with James R. Thompson: Nonparametric function estimation, modeling, and simulation. SIAM 1990
with James R. Thompson: Nonparametric probability density estimation. Johns Hopkins University Press 1978

Web links

Commons : Richard A. Tapia - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

^ Richard A. Tapia in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)

personal data
SURNAME	Tapia, Richard A.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Tapia, Richard Alfred (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH	March 25, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH	Santa Monica , California

[1] Richard A. Tapia in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)