Constantine Michael Dafermos (

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

: Κωνσταντίνος Δαφέρμος; born May 26, 1941,

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

) is a

Greek-American Greek Americans ( ''Ellinoamerikanoí'' ''Ellinoamerikánoi'' ) are Americans of full or partial Greek ancestry. There is an estimate of 1.2 million Americans of full or partial Greek ancestry. According to the US census, 264,066 people o ...

applied 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, structure, space, models, and change. History One ...

. He received a diploma in civil engineering from the

National Technical University of Athens The National (Metsovian) Technical University of Athens (NTUA; , ''National Metsovian Polytechnic''), sometimes known as Athens Polytechnic, a university in Athens, Greece. It is named in honor of its benefactors Nikolaos Stournaris, Eleni Tosi ...

(1964) and a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in mechanics from

Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...

under the direction of

Jerald Ericksen Jerald LaVerne Ericksen (December 20, 1924 – June 11, 2021) was an American mathematician specializing in continuum mechanics. Early life Ericksen was born in Portland, Oregon. His father Adolf worked at a Portland creamery and became adept a ...

(1967). He has been an assistant professor at

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

(1968–1971) and an associate professor (1971–1975) and professor (since 1975) in the Division of Applied Mathematics at

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

. Since 1984, he has been the Alumni-Alumnae University Professor at Brown. In recent years, his research has focused on nonlinear hyperbolic systems of

conservation law In physics, a conservation law states that a particular measurable property of an isolated physical system does not change as the system evolves over time. Exact conservation laws include conservation of mass-energy, conservation of linear momen ...

s whose solutions spontaneously develop singularities propagating as

shock waves In physics, a shock wave (also spelled shockwave), or shock, is a type of propagating disturbance that moves faster than the local speed of sound in the medium. Like an ordinary wave, a shock wave carries energy and can propagate through a me ...

. In particular, he is studying the interplay between

thermodynamics Thermodynamics is a branch of physics that deals with heat, Work (thermodynamics), work, and temperature, and their relation to energy, entropy, and the physical properties of matter and radiation. The behavior of these quantities is governed b ...

and analysis in the theory of these systems and he is analyzing the fundamental role of

entropy Entropy is a scientific concept, most commonly associated with states of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty. The term and the concept are used in diverse fields, from classical thermodynamics, where it was first recognized, to the micros ...

as a stabilizing agent. In 2012 he became a fellow of the

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 2016 he was elected to the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

Awards

*Honorary Doctorate, University of Athens, 1987. *Honorary Doctorate, National Technical University (Greece), 1991. *Honorary Doctorate, University of Crete, 2001. *SIAM W.T. and Idalia Reid Prize, 2000. * ISIMM prize, 2014 *

Norbert Wiener Prize in Applied Mathematics The Norbert Wiener Prize in Applied Mathematics is a $5000 prize awarded, every three years, for an outstanding contribution to "applied mathematics in the highest and broadest sense." It was endowed in 1967 in honor of Norbert Wiener by MIT's mat ...

, 2016 Norbert Wiener Prize in Applied Mathematics 2016
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Affiliations

*Fellow American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2001-. *Correspondent Member, Academy of Athens, 1988-. *Honorary Professor, Academia Sinica, China, 2004-. *Member, Board of Governors, Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), 1995-.

Notes

Sources

*Brown University, The Division of Applied Mathematics (http://www.dam.brown.edu/) {{DEFAULTSORT:Dafermos, Constantine 20th-century Greek mathematicians National Technical University of Athens alumni Brown University faculty Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Living people 1941 births Scientists from Athens Johns Hopkins University alumni Cornell University faculty Greek emigrants to the United States