The R. Kent Nagle Lecture Series
Courtesy of J. Kim Vandiver and
Harold Edgerton, MIT
March 29, 2007
Fang-Hua Lin explores the topic “Problems for the Millennium: The
Navier-Stokes Equations”
Date: March 29, 2007
Time: Thursday evening 7:30-8:30 p.m.
Place: TECO Conference Hall, Anchin Center, USF Campus
Parking: There is free parking in the Collins Boulevard Parking
Facility.
Fang-Hua Lin
Fang-Hua Lin
Problems for the Millennium: The Navier-Stokes Equations
A description of the talk:
The Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, named in 2000
seven Prize Problems, “Problems of the Millennium”, focusing on
important classical questions that have resisted solution over many decades.
A $7 million prize fund was established for the solution to these problems,
with $1 million allocated to each. Professor Lin's talk will focus on one of
these problems: the existence and smoothness of the Navier-Stokes equations,
that describe the motion of fluids and gases, and are the most basic equations
in fluid dynamics. More generally, they describe the physics behind a large
number of phenomena of academic and economic interest. They are used to model
weather, ocean currents, motions of stars inside a galaxy, the flow and
turbulence of air around the wing of an airplane, etc. These equations are used
in various technical and engineering problems ranging from the design of
aircrafts and cars to the study of blood flow in veins. The talk will give an
account of the background of these equations, as well as an account of the
mathematical progress toward solving them.
A description of the speaker:
Fang-Hua Lin is a Silver Professor of Mathematics at the Courant Institute of
Mathematical Sciences, New York University. He received his Ph.D. from the
University of Minnesota in 1985, and has held professor and visiting professor
positions at various institutions including the University of Chicago, the
University of Minnesota, Fudan University and the Zhejiang University, China. In
recognition of his extraordinary work in mathematics he has received numerous
mathematics prizes, including the Alfred P. Sloan research fellowship, the
Presidential Young Investigator award, the Bochner Prize and the S. S. Chern
Prize. In 2004 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He
is an oversea assessor for the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and serves on the
editorial boards of many mathematical journals. He has been invited to deliver
numerous prestigious plenary talks at various international mathematical
conferences and congresses. He has also given several named lectures and lecture
series, including the Taft lecture at the University of Cincinnati and the
M. B. Porter lectures at Rice University.