Michael J. D. Powell

Who is Michael J. D. Powell?

Michael James David Powell FRS, FAA, FIMA is a British mathematics professor, retired from Cambridge University, where he earned his bachelors degree and, in 1979, his D.Sc.. He is known for his extensive work in numerical analysis, especially nonlinear optimization and approximation. He was a founding member of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications and a founding Managing Editor of the Journal for Numerical Analysis. He was the winner of many awards, including George B. Dantzig Prize from the Mathematical Programming Society/SIAM and the Naylor Prize from the London Mathematical Society.

His mathematical contributions include quasi-Newton methods, particularly the Davidon-Fletcher-Powell formula and the Powell's Symmetric Broyden formula, augmented Lagrangian function, sequential quadratic programming method, trust region algorithms, conjugate direction method, and radial basis function. He has been working on derivative-free optimization algorithms in recent years, the resultant algorithms including COBYLA, UOBYQA, NEWUOA, BOBYQA, and LINCOA. He is the author of numerous scientific papers and of several books, most notably Approximation Theory and Methods.