Gene Day in Auckland

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Gene Golub Day


29 February 2008


Auckland Gene Day Participants:

(Left to Right Standing) Jeff Hunter, Andy Philpott, Rosalind Archer, John Butcher, Garry Tee, Oliver Weide, Andrea Raith,

(Left to Right Kneeling) Michael O'Sullivan (Jr) , David Ryan, Helmut Podharsky


Venue: Engineering Science Seminar Room: Rm 439.201 (Second Floor), 70 Symonds Street.


Time: 10-12 noon followed by a Yum Cha lunch at Dynasty Restaurant, 57-59 Wakefield Street, Auckland central

Gene Golub's Day in Auckland is organised by John Butcher and Andy Philpott

This meeting is part of the Gene Golub Around the World Events celebration. Gene Golub's friends and colleagues will gather around the globe on Friday February 29, 2008, the date that would have been his 19th birthday, to mourn his passing and celebrate his life. Gene Golub's life will be celebrated simultaneously in Adelaide, Auckland, Berlin, Canberra, Dartmouth, Mass., Delft, Hong Kong, Leuven, Linkoping, Oxford, Pisa, Porto, Stanford, Tel Aviv, Tripolis, Urbana-Champaign and Waterloo.

Initial list of speakers

  • Rosalind Archer
  • John Butcher
  • Jeff Hunter
  • Michael O'Sullivan Jr.
  • Garry Tee


Who was Gene Golub? Gene Golub has been at the centre of numerical analysis from the earliest days of this subject; that is from when it started to gain recognition as a serious mathematical science in its own right.

Although his contributions were mainly in the field of numerical linear algebra, his influence has extended much more widely through his encouragement and personal commitment to all aspects of scientific computation. Some of these wider contributions include the development of the SIAM journal publishing enterprise, and his role as a founder editor of Acta Numerica. He was also on of the founders of NA-Net, NA Digest, and the quadrennial ICIAM Congresses. As the scope of numerical analysis has widened it has kept itself at the same time small and self-contained through the personal style of Gene and people like him. In New Zealand there are many people who have come under Gene's direct influence and some of these people will be participating in the Auckland section of the World Wide Gene Golub Day.


Wikipedia entry for Gene Golub

Contents

Talks

An Application of SVD in Petroleum Reservoir Engineering

Rosalind Archer

Lecturer, Department of Engineering Science, Faculty of Engineering, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand

This talk presents both some personal reminenscences of taking one of Gene's graduate courses in numerical linear algebra at Stanford University and an application of SVD. Inverse problems are important in a range of petroleum engineering problems. In this talk I will present an application of SVD to inverse modelling used to interpret tracer test data from an oil field to determine reservoir permeability and remaining oil in place. SVD plays an important role in determining both the parameter values and their resolution.


Gene Golub: Personal Reminiscences

J. C. Butcher

Honorary Research Professor, Department of Mathematics, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland New Zealand

Abstract I was first aware of Gene Golub in 1956 and met him face to face in 1965. Since then our paths have crossed many times, most recently at the 2007 ICIAM congress in Zürich. These were not just chance encounters but rich and rewarding experiences, at least for me. In these reminiscences I will express something of my indebtedness to Gene for his encouragement and support. He was a man of immense scientific stature and, at the same time, a man of great kindness and humanity.


Gene Golub - Matrices and Statistics, Google's Page Rank

Jeffrey J Hunter

Professor Emeritus of Statistics, Institute of Information and Mathematical Sciences Massey University Auckland, Private Bag 102 904, North Shore Mail Centre, 0745, NEW ZEALAND Home Phone +64 9 521 2683

Abstract: Gene has been a keen participant at the annual International Workshops in Matrices and Statistics (1995, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2006) This talk outlines his involvement and is illustrated with photos of his participation. In addition he was an invited speaker with the presenter at a Workshop on Matrix Theory and its Applications convened by C.R. Rao at Penn State in July 2006. We give a brief survey of one of the talks that he delivered highlighting some of his recent work on the computation of Google's PageRank.


Gene Golub and Dynamic Programming

Michael O'Sullivan

Professor, Department of Engineering Science, Faculty of Engineering, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand

Abstract: Gene Golub is not as far removed from the world of dynamic programming as one may think. In this talk I will begin by showing the close relationship between Prof Golub and dynamic programming. Then I will discuss how Prof Golub's field of numerical linear algebra is at the centre of new methods for solving large-scale infinite-horizon stochastic dynamic programming problems.


Gene Golub and Iterative Methods for Linear Systems

Garry Tee

Lecturer, Department of Mathematics, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland New Zealand

Abstract: Gene Golub was born in Chicago on 1932 February 29. At the University of Illinois from 1953 to 1959 he began writing computer programs, and he realized that matrices are very convenient in many computations. At the University of Cambridge in 1959-1960 he met Jim Wilkinson and other mathematicians at the National Physical Laboratory, who were developing matrix computation. From 1962 he was based at Stanford University.

Four of his major papers deal with Iterative Methods for Linear Systems:

  • Chebyshev semi-iterative methods, successive over-relaxation iterative methods, and second-order Richardson iterative methods, Parts 1 & 2 (with R. S. Varga).
  • A generalized conjugate gradient method for non-symmetric systems of linear equations (with Paul Concus).
  • A generalized conjugate gradient method for the numerical solution of elliptic partial differential equations (with Paul Concus & Dianne P. O'Leary).
  • Hermitian and Skew-Hermitian Splitting Methods for non-Hermitian Positive Definite Linear Systems (with Zhong-Zhi Bai & Michael K. Ng).
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