- Feng Kang
Feng Kang (zh-cp |c=冯康 |p=Féng Kāng) was a Chinese
mathematician andscientist .He was born in
Nanjing ,China onSeptember 9 ,1920 , died onAugust 17 ,1993 . He spent his childhood inSuzhou ,Jiangsu Province . He studied at Suzhou Middle School. In 1939 he was admitted to Department ofElectrical Engineering of theNational Central University (which moved toChongqing during 1937~1945 and changed the name toNanjing University in 1949) and in two years later he transferred to the Department ofPhysics where he studied until his graduation in 1944. He got interested inmathematics and studied it at the university.After graduation he contracted
vertebral tuberculosis and continued to learnmathematics by himself at home. Later in 1946 he went to teach mathematics atTsinghua University . In 1951 he was appointed as assistant professor at Institute of Mathematics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. From 1951 to 1953 he worked atSteklov Mathematical Institute inMoscow , under the supervision of ProfessorLev Pontryagin . In 1957 he was elected as an associate professor at Institute of Computer Technology of theChinese Academy of Sciences , where he began his work on computational mathematics and became the founder and leader of computational mathematics and scientific computing in China. In 1978 he was appointed as the first Director of the newly founded Computing Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences until 1987 when he became the Honorary Director.Academic life
Feng Kang's scientific contributions range many fields. Before 1957 he mainly worked on pure mathematics, specially on
topological groups ,Lie group s and generalized function theory. From 1957 he changed toapplied mathematics andcomputational mathematics . Because of his sound and broad knowledge in mathematics and physics, he made a series of pioneer researches in computational mathematics.In the later 1950s and early 1960s, based on the computations of dam constructions, Professor Feng proposed a systematic numerical method for solving partial differential equations. The method was called "Finite difference method based on variation principle". This method was also independently invented in the West, called there the "
finite element method ". It is now considered that the invention of the finite element method is a milestone of computational mathematics. In the 1970s Professor Feng gave embedding theories in the discontinuous finite element space, and generalized classical theory onelliptic equation s to various dimensional combinations, which provided a mathematical foundation for elastic composite structures.Also in the 1970s, he made great efforts and contributions in reducing elliptic equation to boundary integral equation. He gave
natural boundary element method , which is now regarded as one of three main boundary element methods. From 1978 he had given lectures and seminars on finite elements and natural boundary elements in more than ten universities and institutes inFrance ,Italy ,Japan andUSA .From 1984 Professor Feng changed his research field from
elliptic equation s todynamical system s such asHamiltonian system s andwave equation s. He proposedsymplectic algorithm s for Hamiltonian systems based onsymplectic geometry . Such algorithms can preserve the symplectic geometric structure of Hamiltonian systems.He then led and supervised a research group on the symplectic algorithms for Hamiltonian systems with finite and infinite dimensions, and on dynamical systems with
Lie algebra ic structures, such ascontact system s, source-free systems, etc., making use of the corresponding geometry and the underlying Lie algebras and Lie groups. These algorithms are overwhelmingly superior to conventional algorithms in long term tracking and qualitative simulation in many practical applications, such ascelestial mechanics ,molecular dynamics , etc.References
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External links
* [http://lsec.cc.ac.cn/fengkangprize/about.html About Feng Kang]
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