| Authorised form of name | Higham; Nicholas John (1961 - 2024); mathematician |
| Dates | 1961 - 2024 |
| Nationality | British |
| Place of birth | Eccles, Salford, Greater Manchester, England |
| Date of birth | 25/12/1961 |
| Date of death | 20/01/2024 |
| Occupation | mathematician |
| Research field | Theoretical physics |
| Applied mathematics |
| Computer systems |
| Numerical linear algebra |
| Algebra |
| Mathematics |
| Activity | Education:
Eccles Grammar School; Eccles College; University of Manchester 1982-1985 (BSc, MSc, PhD)
Career:
Lecturer in mathematics, School of Mathematics, University of Manchester (1985) becoming Richardson Professor of Applied Mathematics (1998); Visiting Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York (1988-1989); died of blood cancer.
Memberships:
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (President 2017-2018)
Awards/Medals:
Alston Householder Award VI 1987
Leslie Fox Prize for Numerical Analysis 1988
Junior Whitehead Prize 1999
Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award 2003-2008
Fröhlich Prize of the London Mathematical Society 2008
SIAM Fellow 2009
Naylor Prize and Lectureship 2019
IMA Gold Medal 2020
ACM Fellow 2020
George Pólya Prize for Mathematical Exposition 2021
Hans Schneider Prize in Linear Algebra 2022
Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering 2022 |
| Membership category | Fellow |
| Date of election | 17/05/2007 |
| Age at election | 45 |
| RSActivity | Comittees:
Royal Society Wolfson Fellowships Committee, Mmber (January 2024)
Industry Fellowships Joint Panel, Member (January 2021 - December 2023)
Sectional Committee 1: Mathematics, Chair (November 2020 - October 2022)
Sectional Committee 1: Mathematics, Member (December 2009 - November 2012; November 2019 - October 2020) |
| Relationships | Parents: Ken and Doris Higham.
Spouse: (May 1998, Paris) Françoise Tisseur, numerical analyst and Professor of Numerical Analysis at the Department of Mathematics, University of Manchester.
Children: Thomas and Freddie. |
| PublishedWorks | RCN R78382
RCN R79972
RCN R78381
RCN R78383
RCN R78563
RCN R82635 |
| OtherInfo | His work was fundamental to the success of very large matrix computations and has strongly influenced the development of widely used software, including MATLAB and LAPACK.
His research on functions of matrices led to widely used algorithms for computing the matrix exponential, the matrix logarithm, and other important matrix functions.
Leading expert on matrix nearness problems, including the computation of the nearest correlation matrix in financial and other applications. |
| Related images | Discover a selection of related images in our picture library |
| Source | Fellows Directory: Professor Nicholas Higham FRS, on The Royal Society website [URL: https://royalsociety.org/people/nicholas-higham-11616/; last accessed: 04/12/2024]
Higham, Desmond J and Tisseur, Françoise, 1 May 2024, Volume 57, Issue 04, Obituary: Nicholas J. Higham, on the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics website [URL: https://www.siam.org/publications/siam-news/articles/obituary-nicholas-j-higham/; last accessed: 04/12/2024] |
| Code | NA9458 |
Archives associated with this Fellow
| RefNo | Title | Date |
| EC/2007/21 | Higham, Nicholas: certificate of election to the Royal Society | |
| IM/007257 | Higham, Nicholas | 2007 |