Sergei Konstantinowitsch Godunow

Sergei Konstantinowitsch Godunow (2006)

Sergei Konstantinowitsch Godunow ( Russian Сергей Константинович Годунов , scientific transliteration Sergej Konstantinovič Godunov ; born July 17, 1929 in Moscow ) is a Russian mathematician .

Career

He graduated from Moscow State University in 1951 . In 1954 he received his doctorate under Ivan Georgijewitsch Petrowski ( differential methods for shock waves ) and in 1965 he completed his habilitation (Russian doctorate). From 1951 to 1953 he was at the Steklow Institute in Moscow and from 1953 at the Keldysh Institute for Applied Mathematics in Moscow, where he became laboratory manager in 1962. From 1969 he was at the computing center of the Siberian Department of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk . Since 1980 he worked at the Sobolev Institute in Novosibirsk, where he headed a laboratory. 1981 to 1986 he was vice president of the institute. In 2000 he retired. In addition, from 1969 to 1997 he was a professor at the Novosibirsk State University on the chair of differential equations.

He became a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1976 and a full member in 1994 . He was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1959, the Krylov Prize of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1972, and the Lavrentiev Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1993. In 1997 he became an honorary professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

Like many applied mathematicians, he worked on problems in space travel in the 1950s and 1960s . The Godunow splitting , a first-order numerical method for solving partial differential equations with source terms, and the Godunow method , which he published in 1959, are named after him . That provided the basic idea for modern finite volume methods for solving conservation equations . The Riemann problems that arise there are precisely solved in the Godunow method, which is also possible for non-linear systems. Interestingly, the process was not used in the Soviet Union , but in the USA until the 1980s . Instead, the Soviets simulated their nuclear missiles using the method developed by the American RW MacCormack.

In 1959 he proved that a linear method for solving partial differential equations, which is monotonic, i.e. does not generate new extremes, can be at most first order.

He wrote several textbooks and monographs in Russia, among others on difference methods, partial differential equations (especially in gas dynamics and their numerical solution), continuum mechanics and linear algebra.

Fonts

• A Finite Difference Method for the Numerical Computation of Discontinuous Solutions of the Equations of Fluid Dynamics, Mat. Sb., Vol. 47, pp. 357--393, 1959 (Godunow method)
• The problem of a generalized solution in the theory of quasi-linear equations and in gas dynamics, Russ. Math. Survey, Vol. 17, pp. 145-156, 1962
• with Evgenii I. Romenskii Elements of continuum mechanics and conservation laws , Kluwer / Plenum 2003
• with VS Ryabenkii Difference schemes: an introduction to the underlying theory , Elsevier 1987
• with VS Ryabenki Theory of difference schemes, an introduction , North Holland, Interscience 1964
• Equations de la physique mathématique , Moscow, Paris 1973
• Ordinary differential equations with constant coefficient , American Mathematical Society 1997
• Modern aspects of linear algebra , American Mathematical Society 1998

Web links

• Homepage of Sergei Konstantinowitsch Godunow (engl.)