Institute for Physical Science & Technology

Home > Research Faculty & Scientists >

Ivo Babuska

Distinguished University Professor Emeritus
Numerical Analysis

HONORS AND AWARDS (some)

• Czechoslovak State Prize for Mathematics, 1968.
• Humboldt Senior US Scientist Award of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1976.
• Birkoff Prize: American Mathematical Society and Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 1994.
• Doctor of Sciences Honoris Causa:
  • University of Westminster (UK), 1996
  • Brunel University (UK), 1996.
  • Charles University (Czech Republic), 1997.
• Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland, 1995.
• J. von Neumann Medal, U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics, 1995.
• Distinguished University Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland, 1996.
• Bolzano Medal, Czech Academy of Sciences, 1996.
• Fellow of the U.S. Association of Computational Mechanics, 1997.

PUBLICATIONS

Dr. Babuska has published more that 230 papers in refereed journals and 5 books.  He is an editor or member of editorial boards for many mathematical and engineering journals.  He has advised about 34 Ph.D. students.

 MAJOR FIELD OF INTEREST

Numerical treatment of PDE’s and applications to computational mechanics.  Dr. Babuska contributed significantly to the theory and practice of the finite element method (FEM).  He, among others, introduced the so called inf sup condition, also called the BB condition, the theory of the p-version of FEM, etc.  The BB condition is an important part of the foundation of the theory of FEM.  He also introduced the theory and practice of a posteriori error estimation which is now widely used in engineering computations.