Brian White (mathematician)

Brian Cabell White is an American mathematician who specializes in differential geometry and geometric measure theory. He is a professor of mathematics and former chair of the mathematics department at Stanford University.[1] He played a key role in the solution of the double bubble conjecture, that the minimum-area enclosure of two volumes is formed from three spherical patches meeting in a circle and forming dihedral angles of 2π/3 with each other, by proving that the optimal solution to this problem is necessarily a surface of revolution.[2]

White graduated from Yale University in 1977, as the top student in the sciences at Yale.[3] He earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1982, with a dissertation on minimal surfaces supervised by Frederick J. Almgren, Jr.[4] After postdoctoral research at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University, he became a faculty member at Stanford in 1983.[3]

He was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship in 1985,[5] and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1999.[3] He was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2002, speaking in the differential geometry section on the curve-shortening flow and mean curvature flow.[6][7] In 2012, he was selected as one of the inaugural fellows of the American Mathematical Society.[8]

  1. ^ "Brian White", Department Directory, Department of Mathematics, Stanford University, retrieved 2015-11-05.
  2. ^ Morgan, Frank (2004), "Proof of the double bubble conjecture", in Hardt, Robert (ed.), Six Themes on Variation, Student Mathematical Library, vol. 26, American Mathematical Society, pp. 59–77, MR 2108996. Revised version of an article initially appearing in the American Mathematical Monthly (2001), doi:10.2307/2695380, MR1834699.
  3. ^ a b c Salisbury, David F.; Manuel, Diane (April 21, 1999), "Three win Guggenheims for past achievement, future promise", Stanford Report.
  4. ^ Brian White at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  5. ^ "90 Scientists and Economists win Sloan Research Awards", The New York Times, March 10, 1985.
  6. ^ ICM Plenary and Invited Speakers since 1897, International Mathematical Union, archived from the original on 2017-11-24, retrieved 2015-11-05.
  7. ^ White, Brian (2002), "Evolution of curves and surfaces by mean curvature", Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians, Vol. I (Beijing, 2002), Higher Ed. Press, Beijing, pp. 525–538, arXiv:math/0212407, Bibcode:2002math.....12407W, MR 1989203.
  8. ^ List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society, retrieved 2015-11-05.