Emeritus professor to receive honorary doctorate from Tbilisi State University

1:33 p.m., Aug. 8, 2012--Robert Gilbert, Unidel Professor Emeritus of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Delaware, has been awarded an honorary doctorate from Tbilisi State University’s I. Vekua Institute of Applied Mathematics. 

He was recognized for his “valuable contributions to the theory of differential and integral equations and applied mathematics, and the successful cooperation with the scientists of the [institute and university].” 

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Gilbert is primarily known for his treatises on function theoretic methods applied to partial differential equations, which is one of his many areas of research. 

He has received numerous honors this year, in celebration of his 80th birthday, including tributes from two academic journals, which have dedicated issues to his storied legacy and career. 

An editorial published earlier this year in Complex Variables and Elliptic Equations calls him “perhaps the world’s primary authority in certain areas such as function theoretic methods in elliptic PDE and on scattering and detection problems in shallow oceans.”

Gilbert’s most recent research efforts are in the areas of inverse problems, theory of plasto-elasticity, homogenization, hemi-variational inequalities, and the flow of viscous fluids. 

He is a three-time winner of the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Award, which is one of the top research awards given by the German government to internationally renowned scientists and engineers and rarely presented multiple times to an individual scientist. 

He will be presented with the honorary doctorate on Thursday, Aug. 9, during the second day of a two-day Conference on Applied Analysis and Mathematical Biology at UD.

The conference, which aims to strengthen communication between biological scientists and applied analysts and builds on Gilbert’s research in biological mechanics, is being sponsored by the Department of Mathematical Sciences, the Taylor and Francis Group, and the International Society for Analysis, its Applications and Computations in honor of his 80th birthday.