Awarded to Felix Otto (Universität Bonn, Germany).
Felix Otto is among the premier applied analysts of his generation. As an analyst, he has made fundamental contributions in areas ranging from micromagnetics, to coarsening rates during phase separation, to mass transportation problems. His work has given these areas a sense of clarity and definitiveness that has gone far beyond the reach of existing heuristic arguments.
In a series of papers, some joint with Cantero-Alvarez, Antonio Desimone, Bob Kohn and Stefan Müller, Felix Otto and co-workers have analyzed the Landau-Lifshitz model of micromagnetics in considerable detail.
It is through the work of Felix Otto and his co-workers that we now understand the scaling and the energy landscape of this complex problem in many different regimes.
Felix Otto's work is a unique combination of deep physical insight, sophisticated scaling and heuristic arguments, and above all deep and interesting analysis. His work is applied analysis at its very best — applying rigorous analysis to clarify issues that were previously confused, and providing fresh insight through the introduction of entirely new models and methods.
Subcommittee for the 2007 ICIAM Collatz Prize
- Volker Mehrmann (TU Berlin), chair;
- Miloslav Feistauer (Prague);
- Alfio Quarteroni (Lausanne);
- Weinan E (Princeton);
- Barbara Keyfitz (Fields Institute, Toronto).