Biography:Brian White (mathematician)

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Short description: American mathematician

Brian Cabell White is an American mathematician who specializes in differential geometry and geometric measure theory. He is a professor of mathematics and former chair of the mathematics department at Stanford University.[1] He played a key role in the solution of the double bubble conjecture, that the minimum-area enclosure of two volumes is formed from three spherical patches meeting in a circle and forming dihedral angles of 2π/3 with each other, by proving that the optimal solution to this problem is necessarily a surface of revolution.[2]

White graduated from Yale University in 1977, as the top student in the sciences at Yale.[3] He earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1982, with a dissertation on minimal surfaces supervised by Frederick J. Almgren, Jr.[4] After postdoctoral research at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University, he became a faculty member at Stanford in 1983.[3]

He was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship in 1985,[5] and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1999.[3] He was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2002, speaking in the differential geometry section on the curve-shortening flow and mean curvature flow.[6][7] In 2012, he was selected as one of the inaugural fellows of the American Mathematical Society.[8]

References

  1. "Brian White", Department Directory (Department of Mathematics, Stanford University), http://mathematics.stanford.edu/people/department-directory/name/brian-white/, retrieved 2015-11-05 .
  2. Hardt, Robert, ed. (2004), "Proof of the double bubble conjecture", Six Themes on Variation, Student Mathematical Library, 26, American Mathematical Society, pp. 59–77 . Revised version of an article initially appearing in the American Mathematical Monthly (2001), doi:10.2307/2695380, MR1834699.
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 Salisbury, David F.; Manuel, Diane (April 21, 1999), "Three win Guggenheims for past achievement, future promise", Stanford Report, http://news.stanford.edu/news/1999/april21/guggenheim-421.html .
  4. Brian White at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  5. "90 Scientists and Economists win Sloan Research Awards", The New York Times, March 10, 1985, https://www.nytimes.com/1985/03/10/nyregion/90-scientists-and-economists-win-sloan-research-awards.html .
  6. ICM Plenary and Invited Speakers since 1897, International Mathematical Union, http://www.mathunion.org/db/ICM/Speakers/SortedByLastname.php, retrieved 2015-11-05 .
  7. White, Brian (2002), "Evolution of curves and surfaces by mean curvature", Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians, Vol. I (Beijing, 2002), Higher Ed. Press, Beijing, pp. 525–538, Bibcode2002math.....12407W .
  8. List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society, https://www.ams.org/profession/fellows-list, retrieved 2015-11-05 .