Floris Takens

Floris Takens (born November 12, 1940) is a Dutch mathematician known for contributions to the theory of chaotic dynamical systems.

Together with David Ruelle he predicted that fluid turbulence could develop through a strange attractor, a term they coined, as opposed to the then-prevailing theory of accretion of modes. The prediction was later confirmed by experiment. Takens also established the result now known as the Takens' theorem, which shows how to reconstruct a dynamical system from an observed time-series.

Takens was born in Zaandam in the Netherlands. He attended schools in The Hague and in Zaandam before serving in the Dutch army for one year (1960-1961). At the University of Amsterdam he concluded his undergraduate and graduate studies. He was granted a doctorate in mathematics in 1969 under the supervision on Nicolaas Kuiper for a thesis entitled "The minimal number of critical points of a function on a compact manifold and the Lyusternik–Schnirelmann category".

After his graduate work, Takens spent a year at the IHES, in Bures-sur-Yvette, near Paris, where he worked with David Ruelle, René Thom, and Jacob Palis. His friendship with Palis has taken him many times to the Instituto de Matemática Pura e Aplicada, IMPA, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Their collaboration produced several joint publications.

Takens has been a professor at the University of Groningen, in Groningen, Netherlands since 1972. He retired from teaching in 1999 and is now a professor emeritus.

He is member of:
* The Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences,
* The Brazilian Academy of Sciences (since 1981), and
* The editorial board for the Springer-Verlag's "Lecture Notes in Mathematics."

ee also

* Bogdanov-Takens bifurcation

elected publications

*cite journal | author=D. Ruelle and F. Takens | title= On the nature of turbulence | journal=Communications of Mathematical Physics | year=1971 | volume=20 | pages=167–192 | doi= 10.1007/BF01646553
*cite conference | author=F. Takens | title=Detecting strange attractors in turbulence | booktitle=Lecture Notes in Mathematics | year=1981 | pages=366-381
*cite journal | author=F. Takens and J. Palis Jr. | title= Bifurcations and stability of families of diffeomorphisms | journal=Publications Mathématiques de l'I.H.E.S. | year=1983 | volume=57 | pages=1–71

References

*cite book | author=Henk W. Broer, Bernd Krauskopf, and Gert Vegter, Editors | title=Global Analysis of Dynamical Systems | publisher=IOP Publishing | year=2001 | id=ISBN 0-7503-0803-6
* [http://www.abc.org.br/english/orgn/acaen.asp?codigo=ftakens Member page at the Brazilian Academy of Science] . Has a photograph. Accessed on 20 April 2004.

External links

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