Nagle Lecture Series

2007 Spring Nagle Lecture

Fang-Hua Lin
Problems for the Millennium: The Navier-Stokes Equations
March 29, 2007

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.

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.