Partial Differential Equations in Fluid Dynamics

Isom Herron is a Professor of Mathematics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. After completing his PhD at The Johns Hopkins University and a post-doctoral at the California Institute of Technology, he was in the Mathematics Department at Howard University for many years, and he has held visiting appointments at Northwestern University, University of Maryland, MIT, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Professor Herron's research is in one of the richest areas of applied mathematics: the theory of the stability of fluid flows. Common applications are to phenomena in the atmosphere and the oceans, to problems of the motion of ships and aircraft, and to internal machinery. Modern approaches involve new techniques in operator theory, energy methods, and dynamical systems. His current research interests are in stability of rotating magneto-hydrodynamic flows and more complicated geophysical flows such as groundwater, for which mathematical models are still being developed.