Creative Minds, Charmed Lives: Interviews at Institute for Mathematical Sciences, National University of Singapore

350 Pages·2010·17.59 MB·English

by  Yu Kiang Leong

CREATIVE
MINDS
CHARMED
LIVES
Interviews at
Institute for Mathematical Sciences
National University of Singapore
This page intentionally left blank
IMS_interview.indb 16
Yu Kiang Leong
National University of Singapore, Singapore
CREATIVE
MINDS
CHARMED
LIVES
Interviews at
Institute for Mathematical Sciences
National University of Singapore
World Scientifc
NEW J E R S E Y • L O N D O N • S I N G A P O R E • B E I J I N G • S H A N G H A I • H O N G K O N G • TA I P E I • C H E N N A I
Published by
World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
5 Toh Tuck Link, Singapore 596224
USA office: 27 Warren Street, Suite 401-402, Hackensack, NJ 07601
UK office: 57 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9HE
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
CREATIVE MINDS, CHARMED LIVES
Interviews at Institute for Mathematical Sciences, National University of Singapore
Copyright © 2010 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known
or to be invented, without written permission from the Publisher.
For photocopying of material in this volume, please pay a copying fee through the Copyright Clearance Center,
Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. In this case permission to photocopy is not required
from the publisher.
ISBN-13 978-981-4317-58-0
ISBN-10 981-4317-58-6
Printed in Singapore.
To Professor Jean-Pierre Serre
who kindly gave us the mother of all our interviews
000_FM.indd 5 4/28/10 10:27:20 AM
Contents
viii Foreword
x Preface
xiv Acknowledgements
Béla Bollobás 3 Graphs Extremal and Random
Leonid Bunimovich 17 Stable Islands, Chaotic Seas
Tony Fan-Cheong Chan 27 On Her Majesty’s (the Queen of Science’s) Service
Sun-Yung Alice Chang 35 Analyst in Conformal Land
Jennifer Tour Chayes 41 Basic Research, Hidden Returns
vi Carl de Boor 51 On Wings of Splines
Persi Diaconis 59 The Lure of Magic and Mathematics
David Donoho 67 Sparse Data, Beautiful Mine
Robert F. Engle 77 Archway to Nobel
Hans Föl lmer 85 Effcient Markets, Random Paths
Avner Friedman 95 Mathematician in Control
Roe Goodman 103 Mathematics, Music, Masters
Bryan T. Grenfel l 109 Viral Visitations, Epidemic Models
Takeyuki Hida 115 Brownian Motion, White Noise
Roger Howe 123 Exceptional Lie Group Theorist
Wilfr id Kendall 131 Dancing with Randomness
Lawrence Klein 139 Economist for All Seasons
Brian E. Launder 147 Modeling and Harnessing Turbulence
Fanghua Lin 157 Revolution, Transitions, Partial Differential Equations
Pao Chuen Lui 167 Of Science in Defense
000_FM.indd 6 4/28/10 9:22:07 AM
Eric Maskin 175 Game Theory Master
Eduardo Massad 185 Infectious Diseases, Vaccines, Models
Daniel McFadden 195 Choice Models, Maximal Preferences
Keith Moffatt 203 Magnetohydrodynamic Attraction
Stanley Osher 215 Mathematician with an Edge
Doug Roble 223 Computer Vision, Digital Magic
Ron Shamir 233 Unraveling Genes, Understanding Diseases
Albert Nikolaevich Shiryaev 243 On the Shoulder of a Giant
David O. Siegmund 253 Change-Point, a Consequential Analysis
Theodore Slaman and W. Hugh Woodin 265 Logic and Mathematics vii
Terry Speed 275 Good Gene Hunting
Charles Stein 283 The Invariant, the Direct and the “Pretentious”
Gilbert Strang 289 The Changing Face of Applied Mathematics
Eitan Tadmor 297 Zen of Computational Attraction
Michael Todd 305 Optimization, an Interior Point of View
Sergio Verdú 313 Wireless Communications, at the Shannon Limit
Michael S. Waterman 323 Breathing Mathematics into Genes
330 Author Index
332 Photo Credits
333 Disclaimer
Contents
000_FM.indd 7 4/28/10 9:22:08 AM
Foreword
This interview volume is a collection of all the interviews of prominent visitors to the Institute for
Mathematical Sciences, conducted by Yu Kiang Leong and published in the Institute’s newsletter Imprints
from 2003 to 2009.
The concept of a newsletter with interviews as a regular feature was conceived in conversations with
Yu Kiang in 2002, two years after the establishment of the Institute. We wanted to publish a newsletter
which would be different from the newsletters of other mathematical sciences institutes. We also thought
that interviews of successful mathematicians and scientists would be interesting to the general reader
and, in particular, inspirational to students. Yu Kiang has a fair for writing, widely acknowledged by all
who know him. In 1985, he had also conducted, jointly with Chi Tat Chong, an interview of the legendary
French mathematician Jean-Pierre Serre, who became the youngest recipient of the Fields Medal (the
mathematical counterpart of the Nobel Prize) in 1954 at the age of 28. The interview was frst published
viii
in the June 1985 issue of Mathematical Medley, a publication of the Singapore Mathematical Society,
and later in Volume 8 (1986) of the Mathematical Intelligencer. Since then, it has been translated into
several languages including Czech, Chinese, Arabic, Japanese and Russian. Since Yu Kiang was available
at that time, I invited him to be the founding editor of the newsletter entrusted with the responsibility of
interviewing visiting scientists at IMS. He gladly accepted my invitation and the inaugural issue of Imprints
was published in May 2003 featuring an interview of Roe Goodman. Since then, he has continued to
conduct interviews for every issue of Imprints although he relinquished his editorship in 2006.
After a number of issues, Yu Kiang and I talked about compiling the interviews and publishing them
in a volume at some point. Now that we have a total of 37 interviews and the Institute is approaching
its 10th anniversary, it is an appropriate time for us to embark on this endeavor in commemorating the
10th anniversary. I would like to thank Yu Kiang for his invaluable contributions to the conceptualization
of the newsletter as founding editor and for his tireless efforts and unfailing enthusiasm in conducting
the interviews. I would also like to thank World Scientifc for publishing the volume and for its friendly
cooperation and help in the design and editing. Thanks also go to the current Imprints editors, Denny
Leung and Ser Peow Tan, and former editor, Ka Hin Leung, for their careful editing of the newsletter and
for ensuring its high quality.
IMS_interview.indb 8 4/27/10 4:55:22 PM
I would like to take this opportunity to express my deep gratitude to all the former and current members
of the Scientifc Advisory Board — former members Hans Föllmer, Avner Friedman, the late Jacques-
Louis Lions and Keith Moffatt; and the current members Roger Howe, Pao Chuen Lui, David Mumford,
Olivier Pironneau, David Siegmund and Yum-Tong Siu — for guiding and nurturing the Institute to what it
is today, many of them having advised the Institute from its inception 10 years ago.
Louis Chen
Director
Institute for Mathematical Sciences
ix
Foreword
000_FM.indd 9 4/29/10 8:34:18 AM