Evans to Present Marker Lectures in the Mathematical Sciences from 26 to 29 March 2007

15 March 2007—Lawrence Craig Evans, professor of mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley, will present the Russell Marker Lectures in the Mathematical Sciences from 26 to 29 March 2007 at the Penn State University Park campus. The series begins with a lecture intended for a general audience, titled "Maximum Principles and Generalized Solutions of Nonlinear Partial-Differential Equations," at 8:00 p.m. on Monday, 26 March. He also will present more specialized lectures, including "Applications to Optimal Mass Transport Problems" at 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, 27 March; "Applications to Weak KAM Theory" at 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday, 28 March; and "Applications to Sup-Norm Variational Problems" at 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, 29 March. Each of the free public lectures, sponsored by the Penn State Eberly College of Science, will be held in 114 McAllister Building.

Evans is a leading researcher in the broad field of nonlinear partial-differential equations (PDEs). His early research interests were in the areas of accretive operators and nonlinear semigroup theory. In the 1980s and 1990s, he played a major role in the development of the theory of viscosity solutions for Hamilton-Jacobi equations, with applications to deterministic and stochastic optimal-control problems and to differential games. His later seminal work led to the development of new PDE methods in connection with a variety of problems, including regularity of solutions in the Calculus of Variations, motion by mean curvature, Monge-Kantorovich mass-transport problems, and the weak KAM theory. Among his more recent interests is the theory of the infinity Laplacian and its applications to optimal Lipschitz extensions and to differential games.

In recognition of his work, Evans was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003. He received an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship in 1979, and the American Mathematical Society's Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contributions to Research in 2004. He has given many invited lectures and presentations at academic institutions and professional conferences worldwide.

Evans serves on the editorial boards of several professional journals, including Advanced Nonlinear Studies, the Annals of Mathematical Economics, Applied Mathematics Research Express, the Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysis, and Boundary Value Problems, as well as the Italian journals Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and Annali di Matematica Pura ed Applicata.

Evans received a bachelor's degree from Vanderbilt University in 1971 and a doctoral degree from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1975. He was a member of the faculty at the University of Kentucky from 1975 to 1980 and at the University of Maryland from 1980 to 1989. He joined the faculty of the Department of Mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley in 1989.

The Marker Lectures were established in 1984 through a gift from Russell Earl Marker, professor emeritus of chemistry at Penn State, whose pioneering synthetic methods revolutionized the steroid-hormone industry and opened the door to the current era of hormone therapies, including the birth-control pill. The Marker endowment allows the Penn State Eberly College of Science to present annual Marker Lectures in astronomy and astrophysics, the chemical sciences, evolutionary biology, genetic engineering, the mathematical sciences, and physics.

For more information or access assistance, contact Florence E. Dunlop in the Department of Mathematics at 865-8462 or 865-7527.

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