Richard Alfred Tapia (born March 25, 1938) is an American mathematician and University Professor at

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a private research university in Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranked among the top universities ...

in Houston, Texas, the university's highest academic title. Tapia is the

Principal investigator In many countries, the term principal investigator (PI) refers to the holder of an independent grant and the lead researcher for the grant project, usually in the sciences, such as a laboratory study or a clinical trial. The phrase is also often us ...

on a $2 million NSF grant (2007-2010) addressing networking for a "minority student or faculty at a majority institution". In 2011,

President Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...

awarded Tapia the

National Medal of Science The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social scienc ...

. He is currently the Maxfield and Oshman Professor of Engineering; Associate Director of Graduate Studies, Office of Research and Graduate Studies; and Director of the Center for Excellence and Equity in Education at Rice University. Tapia's mathematical research is focused on mathematical optimization and

iterative method In computational mathematics, an iterative method is a mathematical procedure that uses an initial value to generate a sequence of improving approximate solutions for a class of problems, in which the ''n''-th approximation is derived from the pr ...

s for

nonlinear In mathematics and science, a nonlinear system is a system in which the change of the output is not proportional to the change of the input. Nonlinear problems are of interest to engineers, biologists, physicists, mathematicians, and many othe ...

problems. His current research is in the area of

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...

s for constrained optimization and

interior point method Interior-point methods (also referred to as barrier methods or IPMs) are a certain class of algorithms that solve linear and nonlinear convex optimization problems. An interior point method was discovered by Soviet mathematician I. I. Dikin in 1 ...

s for

linear Linearity is the property of a mathematical relationship ('' function'') that can be graphically represented as a straight line. Linearity is closely related to '' proportionality''. Examples in physics include rectilinear motion, the linear ...

and nonlinear programming.

Biography

Tapia was born in

Santa Monica, California Santa Monica (; Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 U.S. Census population was 93,076. Santa Monica is a popular resort town, owing t ...

to parents, Amado and Magda, who both emigrated to the United States from Mexico. His father worked for Japanese American

horticulturist Horticulture is the branch of agriculture that deals with the art, science, technology, and business of plant cultivation. It includes the cultivation of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, sprouts, mushrooms, algae, flowers, seaweeds and no ...

s in southern California.

Education

He received his B.A. in mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1961. He then earned his M.A. in mathematics, also from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1966. He received his Ph.D. from

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...

, 1967 in mathematics with the dissertation: "A Generalization of Newton's Method with an Application to the

Euler–Lagrange Equation In the calculus of variations and classical mechanics, the Euler–Lagrange equations are a system of second-order ordinary differential equations whose solutions are stationary points of the given action functional. The equations were discovered ...

" under the advisors: Magnus Hestenes, Charles Tompkins Tapia also holds honorary doctorates from Carnegie Mellon University and the

Colorado School of Mines The Colorado School of Mines, informally called Mines, is a public research university in Golden, Colorado, founded in 1874. The school offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees in engineering, science, and mathematics, with a focus on en ...

Career

In 2004, he received the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Prize for Distinguished Service to the Profession, in Portland, and Distinguished Public Service Award,

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

, in Phoenix. In 2009, he received Hispanic Heritage Award in Math and Science and he was chosen to have a "Celebration of Diversity in Computing" onferencenamed after him (usually held annually or biennially). In 2014, the Blackwell-Tapia prize and conference were named for Tapia and

David Blackwell David Harold Blackwell (April 24, 1919 – July 8, 2010) was an American statistician and mathematician who made significant contributions to game theory, probability theory, information theory, and statistics. He is one of the eponyms of th ...

. In 2021, he received the award Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

References

* *
Tapia Video Biography
, The Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice University. * * *
Tapia promoted to University Professor
, Rice University News Release. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Tapia, Richard A. 1939 births Living people American academics of Mexican descent 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering National Medal of Science laureates Rice University faculty University of California, Los Angeles alumni

Biography

Education

Career

See also

References