Luis Ángel Caffarelli (; born December 8, 1948) is an Argentine-American

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 ...

. He studies

partial differential equations In mathematics, a partial differential equation (PDE) is an equation which involves a multivariable function and one or more of its partial derivatives. The function is often thought of as an "unknown" that solves the equation, similar to how ...

and their applications. Caffarelli is a professor of mathematics at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

, and the winner of the 2023 Abel Prize.

Career

Caffarelli was born and grew up in

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...

. He obtained his Masters of Science (1968) and Ph.D. (1972) at the

University of Buenos Aires The University of Buenos Aires (, UBA) is a public university, public research university in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is the second-oldest university in the country, and the largest university of the country by enrollment. Established in 1821 ...

. His Ph.D. advisor was Calixto Calderón. He currently holds the Sid Richardson Chair at the

and is core faculty at the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences. He also has been a professor at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...

, the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

, and the

Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (commonly known as Courant or CIMS) is the mathematics research school of New York University (NYU). Founded in 1935, it is named after Richard Courant, one of the founders of the Courant Institute ...

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

. From 1986 to 1996 he was a professor at the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry located in Princeton, New Jersey. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholars, including Albert Ein ...

in Princeton.

Research

Caffarelli published "The regularity of free boundaries in higher dimensions" in 1977 in ''

Acta Mathematica ''Acta Mathematica'' is a peer-reviewed open-access scientific journal covering research in all fields of mathematics. According to Cédric Villani, this journal is "considered by many to be the most prestigious of all mathematical research journ ...

''. One of his most cited results regards the ''Partial regularity of suitable weak solutions of the

Navier–Stokes equations The Navier–Stokes equations ( ) are partial differential equations which describe the motion of viscous fluid substances. They were named after French engineer and physicist Claude-Louis Navier and the Irish physicist and mathematician Georg ...

''; it was obtained in 1982 in collaboration with

Louis Nirenberg Louis Nirenberg (February 28, 1925 – January 26, 2020) was a Canadian-American mathematician, considered one of the most outstanding Mathematical analysis, mathematicians of the 20th century. Nearly all of his work was in the field of par ...

and Robert V. Kohn.

Awards and recognition

In 1991 he was elected to the U.S.

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 ...

. He was awarded

honorary doctorates An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hono ...

by the

École Normale Supérieure École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing i ...

, Paris, the

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac (known simply as Notre Dame; ; ND) is a Private university, private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, United States. Founded in 1842 by members of the Congregation of Holy Cross, a Cathol ...

, the

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid The Autonomous University of Madrid (; UAM), commonly known as la Autónoma, is a Spanish public university located in Madrid, Spain. The university was founded in 1968 by royal decree. UAM is widely respected as one of the most prestigious univ ...

, and the Universidad de La Plata, Argentina. He received the

Bôcher Memorial Prize The Bôcher Memorial Prize was founded by the American Mathematical Society in 1923 in memory of Maxime Bôcher with an initial endowment of $1,450 (contributed by members of that society). It is awarded every three years (formerly every five yea ...

in 1984. He is listed as an

ISI highly cited researcher The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) was an academic publishing service, founded by Eugene Garfield in Philadelphia in 1956. ISI offered scientometric and bibliographic database services. Its specialty was citation indexing and analysis ...

. In 2003 Konex Foundation from Argentina granted him the Diamond Konex Award, one of the most prestigious awards in Argentina, as the most important Scientist of his country in the last decade. In 2005, he received the prestigious

Rolf Schock Prize The Rolf Schock Prizes were established and endowed by bequest of philosopher and artist Rolf Schock (1933–1986). The prizes were first awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1993 and, since 2005, are awarded every three years. It is sometimes conside ...

of the

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences () is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special responsibility for promoting nat ...

"for his important contributions to the theory of nonlinear partial differential equations". He also received the Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Mathematics in 2009. In 2012 he was awarded the

Wolf Prize in Mathematics The Wolf Prize in Mathematics is awarded almost annually by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture, Chemistry, Medicine, Physics and Arts. ...

(jointly with

Michael Aschbacher Michael George Aschbacher (born April 8, 1944) is an American mathematician best known for his work on finite groups. He was a leading figure in the completion of the classification of finite simple groups in the 1970s and 1980s. It later turned ...

) and 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 2017 he gave the Łojasiewicz Lecture (on "Some models of segregation") at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. In 2018, he was named a SIAM Fellow and he received the Shaw Prize in Mathematics. In 2023, he was awarded the Abel Prize "for his seminal contributions to regularity theory for nonlinear partial differential equations including free-boundary problems and the

Monge–Ampère equation In mathematics, a (real) Monge–Ampère equation is a nonlinear second-order partial differential equation of special kind. A second-order equation for the unknown function ''u'' of two variables ''x'',''y'' is of Monge–Ampère type if it is l ...

". Nature Vol.615 No.7954, 30 March 2023, News p777

Bibliography

Caffarelli has coauthored two books: #''Fully Nonlinear Elliptic Equations'' by Luis Caffarelli and Xavier Cabré (1995), American Mathematical Society. #''A Geometric Approach to Free Boundary Problems'' by Luis Caffarelli and Sandro Salsa (2005), American Mathematical Society.

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Caffarelli, Luis 1948 births 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Abel Prize laureates Argentine mathematicians Argentine people of Italian descent Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences faculty Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Institute for Advanced Study faculty Living people Mathematical analysts Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Partial differential equation theorists People from Buenos Aires Rolf Schock Prize laureates University of Chicago faculty University of Minnesota faculty University of Texas at Austin faculty Wolf Prize in Mathematics laureates