Walter Craig (mathematician)

{{Infobox person

| name = Walter L. Craig

| honorific_suffix = {{post-nominals|country=CAN|FRSC}}

| birth_date = {{Birth year|1953}}

| birth_place = State College, Pennsylvania

| death_date = {{Death date and age|2019|1|18|1953|||df=yes}}

| nationality = Canadian

| education = Ph.D. New York University - Courant Institute (1981)

| years_active = 1981-2019

| known_for = Mathematician

| spouse = Deirdre Haskell

| father = William Craig

}}

Walter L. Craig {{post-nominals|country=CAN|FRSC}} (1953 – January 18, 2019)[https://www.math.mcmaster.ca/index.php/news/department/1919-walter-craig-1953-2019.html Walter Craig 1953 - 2019] was a United States born Canadian mathematician and a Canada Research Chair in Mathematical Analysis and Applications at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario.{{Cite web |url=http://www.chairs-chaires.gc.ca/chairholders-titulaires/profile-eng.aspx?profileId=118 |title=Chairs |publisher=gc.ca |access-date=January 27, 2017}}{{Cite web |url=https://ms.mcmaster.ca/craig/ |title=Walter Craig |publisher=mcmaster.ca |access-date=January 27, 2017}}{{Cite web |url=https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=l4EkxAMAAAAJ&hl=en |title=Walter Craig |access-date=January 27, 2017}}{{Cite web |url=http://www.mcmaster.ca/univsec/reports_lists/DistUnivProf.pdf |title=Distinguished University Professor |publisher=mcmaster.ca |access-date=January 27, 2017}}

Personal life

Craig was born in State College, Pennsylvania in 1953. His father, a professor at Pennsylvania State University transferred to University of California, Berkeley, where Craig and his siblings were raised starting in 1959.

Craig was the son of the logician William Craig and the husband of mathematician Deirdre Haskell.[https://sinews.siam.org/Details-Page/celebrating-the-life-of-walter-craig-1953-2019 SIAM News: Celebrating the Life of Walter Craig (1953-2019)]

Education

Craig attended the University of California at Berkeley and, after spending two years performing as a jazz musician, returned there to graduate with a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1977.{{cite journal | date=April 2020 | title = Remembrances of Walter Craig| journal = Notices of the American Mathematical Society | volume = 67 | issue = 4 | pages = 520–531 | url = https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/202004/rnoti-p520.pdf }} Craig earned his Ph.D. from New York University - Courant Institute in 1981; his dissertation, A Bifurcation Theory for Periodic Dissipative Wave Equations, was supervised by Louis Nirenberg.{{mathgenealogy|id=3333}}

Career

After stints at the California Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and Brown University, Craig moved to McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in 2000. His research topics included nonlinear partial differential equations, infinite dimensional Hamiltonian systems, Schrödinger operators and spectral theory, water waves, general relativity, and cosmology.

In 2007, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada;{{cite web |url=https://rsc-src.ca/en/search-fellows?keywords_44=&first_name=walter&last_name=craig&display_name=&election_year_21=&academy_25=All&division_24=All&discipline_23=All&is_deceased=0&sort_by=last_name&sort_order=ASC|title=Search Fellows|author=|publisher=Royal Society of Canada|access-date=September 7, 2017}} he was awarded a Killam Fellowship in 2009.

In 2013, he became one of the inaugural Fellows of the American Mathematical Society.[http://www.ams.org/profession/fellows-list List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society], retrieved April 12, 2017 He served as Director of the Fields Institute from 2013 to 2015.

References

Category:1953 births

Category:2019 deaths

Category:People from State College, Pennsylvania

Category:Academic staff of McMaster University

Category:Canadian mathematicians

Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada

Category:Fellows of the American Mathematical Society

Category:UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni

Category:Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences alumni