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Gene H. Golub

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gene H. Golub
Gene Golub in 2007
Born(1932-02-29)February 29, 1932
DiedNovember 16, 2007(2007-11-16) (aged 75)
Alma materUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Scientific career
FieldsComputer science
InstitutionsStanford University
Doctoral advisorAbraham Taub
Doctoral studentsRichard P. Brent
Michael Heath
Dianne O'Leary
Michael Overton
Michael Saunders
Margaret H. Wright

Gene Howard Golub (February 29, 1932 – November 16, 2007), was an American numerical analyst who taught at Stanford University as Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science and held a courtesy appointment in electrical engineering.

Personal life

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Born in Chicago, he was educated at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, receiving his B.S. (1953), M.A. (1954) and Ph.D. (1959) all in mathematics.[1] His M.A. degree was more specifically in Mathematical Statistics. His PhD dissertation was entitled "The Use of Chebyshev Matrix Polynomials in the Iterative Solution of Linear Equations Compared to the Method of Successive Overrelaxation" and his thesis adviser was Abraham Taub. Gene Golub succumbed to acute myeloid leukemia on the morning of 16 November 2007 at the Stanford Hospital.[2]

Stanford University

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He arrived at Stanford in 1962 and became a professor there in 1970. He advised more than thirty doctoral students, many of whom have themselves achieved distinction. Gene Golub was an important figure in numerical analysis and pivotal to creating the NA-Net and the NA-Digest, as well as the International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics.[3]

One of his best-known books is Matrix Computations,[4] co-authored with Charles F. Van Loan. He was a major contributor to algorithms for matrix decompositions. In particular he published an algorithm together with William Kahan in 1970 that made the computation of the singular value decomposition (SVD) feasible and that is still used today. A survey of his work was published in 2007 by Oxford University Press as "Milestones in Matrix Computation".[5]

Recognition

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Golub was awarded the B. Bolzano Gold Medal for Merits in the Field of Mathematical Sciences and was one of the few elected to three national academies: the National Academy of Sciences (1993), the National Academy of Engineering (1990), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1994). He was also a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (1986).

He is listed as an ISI highly cited researcher.[6] He held 11 honorary doctorates and was scheduled to receive an honorary doctorate from ETH Zürich on November 17, 2007. He was a visiting professor at Princeton (1970), MIT (1979), ETH (1974 & 2002), and Oxford (1982, 1998 & 2007).

Gene Golub served as the president of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) from 1985 to 1987 and was founding editor of both the SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing (SISC) and the SIAM Journal on Matrix Analysis and Applications (SIMAX).

Selected publications

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Articles

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Books

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References

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  1. ^ Chen Greif, Gene H. Golub Biography, Online at Oxford University Press [1], accessed 24 November 2007
  2. ^ Moler, Cleve (2007-11-16), Gene Golub, 1932 - 2007, NA Digest, retrieved 2007-11-17
  3. ^ Trefethen, Lloyd N. (2007), "Obituary: Gene H. Golub (1932–2007)", Nature, 450 (7172): 962, Bibcode:2007Natur.450..962T, doi:10.1038/450962a, PMID 18075573, S2CID 4413569.
  4. ^ Golub, Gene H.; van Loan, Charles F. (1996), Matrix Computations (3rd ed.), Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 978-0-8018-5414-9
  5. ^ Chan, Raymond; Greif, Chen; O'Leary, Dianne (2007), Milestones in Matrix Computation: The selected works of Gene H. Golub with commentaries, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-920681-0
  6. ^ Thomson ISI, Golub, Gene H., ISI Highly Cited Researchers, retrieved 2007-11-17
  7. ^ Adams, Loyce M. (March 2014). "Featured Review: Matrix Computations. Fourth Edition by Gene H. Golub, Charles F. Van Loan". SIAM Review. 56 (1): 189–191. JSTOR 24248458.
  8. ^ Young, David M. (1993). "Book Review: Scientific computing and differential equations—An introduction to numerical methods". Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. 28 (2): 397–399. doi:10.1090/S0273-0979-1993-00371-9.
  9. ^ "Review of Milestones in Matrix Computation: The Selected Works of Gene H. Golub with Commentaries". European Mathematical Society. 1 October 2011.
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