Lloyd N. Trefethen

Who is Lloyd N. Trefethen?

Lloyd Nicholas Trefethen, FRS is professor of numerical analysis and head of the Numerical Analysis Group in The Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford.

Trefethen obtained his bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1977 and his master's from Stanford University in 1980. His PhD thesis at Stanford in 1982 was entitled Wave Propagation and Stability for Finite Difference Schemes. He went on to work at the Courant Institute in New York, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Cornell University, before being appointed to a chair at the University of Oxford and a Fellowship of Balliol College.

As of 2009, he has published around 125 journal papers spanning a wide range of areas within numerical analysis and applied mathematics, including non-normal eigenvalue problems and applications, spectral methods for differential equations, numerical linear algebra, fluid mechanics, computational complex analysis, and approximation theory. He is perhaps best known for his work on pseudospectra of non-normal matrices and operators. This work covers theoretical aspects as well as numerical algorithms, and applications including fluid mechanics, numerical solution of partial differential equations, numerical linear algebra, shuffling of cards, random matrices, differential equations and lasers. Trefethen is currently an ISI highly cited researcher.