Wolfgang Hackbusch (born 24 October 1948 in

Westerstede Westerstede (; Low German: ''Westerstäe'') is the capital of the Ammerland district, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated approximately 25 km northwest of Oldenburg. It is known for hosting the Rhodo Festival, the biggest exhibition of ...

Lower Saxony Lower Saxony is a States of Germany, German state (') in Northern Germany, northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ' of the Germany, Federal Re ...

) is a German

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

, known for his pioneering research in

multigrid method In numerical analysis, a multigrid method (MG method) is an algorithm for solving differential equations using a hierarchy of discretizations. They are an example of a class of techniques called multiresolution methods, very useful in problems e ...

s and later hierarchical matrices, a concept generalizing the

fast multipole method __NOTOC__ The fast multipole method (FMM) is a numerical technique that was developed to speed up the calculation of long-ranged forces in the ''n''-body problem. It does this by expanding the system Green's function using a multipole expansion, ...

. He was a professor at the

University of Kiel Kiel University, officially the Christian Albrecht University of Kiel, (, abbreviated CAU, known informally as Christiana Albertina) is a public research university in the city of Kiel, Germany. It was founded in 1665 as the ''Academia Holsator ...

and is currently one of the directors of the

Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences The Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences (MPI MiS) in Leipzig is a research institute of the Max Planck Society. Founded on March 1, 1996, the institute works on projects which apply mathematics in various areas of natural science ...

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

Awards and honors

* 1994 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize * 1996

Brouwer Medal The Brouwer Medal is a triennial award presented by the Royal Dutch Mathematical Society and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. The Brouwer Metal gets its name from Dutch mathematician L. E. J. Brouwer and is the Netherlands’ most prestigi ...

* 1998 Plenary Speaker of the

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the IMU Abacus Medal (known before ...

* 2020 Gumin Prize for Mathematics

Publications

* Multi-grid methods and applications, 1985, Springer Berlin,
2013 pbk reprint
* Elliptic Differential Equations: Theory and Numerical Treatment, 1992, Springer Berlin, * Iterative Solution of Large Sparse Systems of Equations, 1993, Springer Berlin,
Integral Equations: Theory and Numerical Treatment
1995, Birkhäuser, * Hierarchische Matrizen: Algorithmen und Analysis, 2009, Springer Berlin, * Tensor spaces and numerical tensor calculus, 2012, Springer, Heidelberg

2014, Springer, Leipzig

References

*Stefan Sauter and Gabriel Wittum, ''On the occasion of the 60th birthday of Wolfgang Hackbusch'', Computing and Visualization in Science 11(2008) 19
DOI 10.1007/s00791-008-0123-z

External links

at the

1948 births Living people People from Ammerland 20th-century German mathematicians Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize winners Brouwer Medalists 21st-century German mathematicians Max Planck Institute directors {{Germany-mathematician-stub