Pauline van den Driessche facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Pauline van den Driessche
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | 1941 (age 83–84) |
| Nationality | British-Canadian |
| Education | Imperial College London |
| Alma mater | University College of Wales |
| Awards | Krieger–Nelson Prize |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | University of Victoria |
Pauline van den Driessche, born in 1941, is a talented British and Canadian mathematician. She is a retired professor at the University of Victoria in Canada. She used her math skills to study real-world problems, especially in biology. She also explored how numbers in tables, called matrices, behave.
Education and Early Career
Pauline van den Driessche studied at two well-known universities. She earned her first degrees from Imperial College London in 1961 and 1963. Then, she completed her highest degree, a doctorate, in 1964. She got this from the University College of Wales. Her special research project was about how liquids and gases move, which is called fluid mechanics.
After finishing her studies, she taught for a year in Wales. In 1965, she moved to Canada. She became an assistant professor at the University of Victoria. She taught and did research there until she retired in 2006.
What She Studied
Pauline van den Driessche made important discoveries in mathematical biology. This field uses math to understand living things and diseases. She studied how diseases spread, like epidemics. She looked at how changing population sizes or people moving to new places affect these outbreaks.
She also did important work in linear algebra. This is a part of math that deals with equations and matrices. Matrices are like grids of numbers. Her work helped show how the patterns of numbers in a matrix can predict if a system will be stable. This research was often inspired by her studies in mathematical biology.
Awards and Special Honors
Pauline van den Driessche has received many awards for her work. In 2005, a special issue of the journal Linear Algebra and its Applications was published to honor her.
In 2007, she won the Krieger–Nelson Prize from the Canadian Mathematical Society. In the same year, she became the first Olga Taussky-Todd Lecturer. This is a special award given every four years at a big international math conference.
In 2013, she became a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. This honor was given for her important work in linear algebra and mathematical biology. She also received the CAIMS Research Prize in 2019. In 2022, she was awarded the Hans Schneider Prize in Linear Algebra.
See also
In Spanish: Pauline van den Driessche para niños
