Stanley Osher is a preeminent figure in computational mathematics with a distinguished career spanning over five decades at the University of California, Los Angeles. Stanley Osher is currently Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at UCLA and Director of Special Projects at the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM), while also maintaining membership in the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI). Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1942, he earned his BS from Brooklyn College in 1962 and completed both his MS and PhD in mathematics at New York University in 1964 and 1966 respectively. His academic journey established a foundation that would lead to numerous groundbreaking contributions across multiple scientific disciplines.
Professor Osher's seminal contributions have revolutionized computational approaches to solving complex mathematical problems, most notably through his invention of the level set methods for computing moving fronts and interfaces, which has generated over one million Google search results bearing his name. His pioneering work on essentially non-oscillatory (ENO) and weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) schemes provided robust solutions to hyperbolic conservation laws, while his development of total variation based optimization techniques fundamentally transformed the fields of image processing and computer vision. His mathematical innovations have overcome the "curse of dimensionality" for certain control theory problems and established standards that are now ubiquitously employed across engineering, physics, and computational sciences. These methodological advances have been instrumental in applications ranging from aeronautics and material science to medical imaging and computer animation, demonstrating the extraordinary breadth of his impact.
Beyond his theoretical contributions, Osher has demonstrated exceptional leadership in bridging mathematical theory with practical applications through his cofounding of three successful companies: Cognitech, Level Set Systems, and Luminescent Technologies, which have translated his mathematical innovations into commercial solutions. His scholarly impact is recognized by his election to the National Academy of Sciences, receipt of the prestigious Carl Friedrich Gauss Prize considered the highest honor in applied mathematics, and numerous other accolades including the SIAM ICIAM Pioneer Prize. With over 200 publications and a legacy as a highly cited researcher whose work continues to influence new generations of computational scientists, Osher has mentored numerous doctoral students while championing interdisciplinary collaborations through his leadership roles at IPAM. His enduring influence continues to shape the landscape of computational mathematics, with his methods remaining foundational to current research in scientific computing, image processing, and optimization problems across multiple scientific and engineering disciplines.
