David M. Young, Ph.D.

---

Professor Young celebrates his 80th birthday on October 20, 2003.

Ashbel Smith Emeritus Professor
Department of Computer Sciences, Department of Mathematics
Emeritus Director
Center for Numerical Analysis
The University of Texas at Austin

Since the SOR method is an algorithm of fundamental importance and David Young's Ph.D. thesis is of historical importance, it has been re-typed and is now available online. ( postscript version, pdf version)

Professor Young's career and many contributions almost exactly parallel the first fifty-years of the field of modern scientific computing. When Professor Young came to The University of Texas at Austin in 1958, he established the Computation Center and was its director until 1970 when he founded the Center for Numerical Analysis and served as its director until 1999.

Computer Sciences Department
1 University Station -- C0500
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712
Tel: (512) 471-9783, Fax: (512) 471-8885
Email: young@cs.utexas.edu

B.S., Webb Institute of Naval Architecture, 1944.
M.A. in Mathematics, Harvard University, 1947.
Ph.D. in Mathematics, Harvard University, 1950.

• Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
• ACM Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science, 1990
• Journal of Linear Algebra and Its Applications, Special Issue Dedication, 1992
• Chair, Applied Mathematics Committee, American Mathematical Society, 1961-1964
• Board of Trustees, Argonne Universities Association, 1975-1981
• Associate Editor, SIAM Journal of Matrices and Matrix Applications, 1989-1991

Numerical analysis, partial differential equations, and numerical linear algebra

His research activity focused on the numerical solution of partial differential equations based on the use of finite difference methods and on the use of iterative methods to solve associated systems of linear algebraic equations involving matrices which are very large and sparse. Several computer software packages have been developed based on this research as part of the ITPACK project. The research is being extended to include methods suitable for shared memory and distributed memory parallel computers. More rapidly convergent iterative methods based on the use of parallel multilevel procedures and parallel alternating-type methods are also being developed.

• D. Young, Iterative Solution of Large Linear Systems, Academic Press, New York, 1971. (Reprinted by Dover, 2003.)
• L. Hageman and D. Young, Applied Iterative Method, Academic Press, 1981. (Reprinted by Dover, 2003.)
• D. Young and R. Gregory, A Survey of Numerical Mathematics, Volume 1 and 2, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1972 and 1973. (Reprinted by Dover, NY, 1988.)

• D. M. Young, "Garrett Birkhoff and Applied Mathematics," in Notices of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 44, no. 11, pp. 1446-1450, 1997.
• D. M. Young and D. R. Kincaid, "A new class of parallel alternating-type iterative methods," Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics, vol. 74, pp. 331-344, 1996.
• D. M. Young, S. Xiao, and K. Baker, "Periodically generated iterative methods for solving elliptic equations," Applied Numerical Mathematics, vol. 19, pp. 375-387, 1995.
• S. Xiao and D. M. Young, "Multiple coarse grid multigrid methods for solving elliptic problems," in NASA Conference Proceedings, Seventh Copper Mountain Conference on Multigrid Methods, Nelson, Manteuffel et al. (Eds.), 3339, part 2, 771-791, 1996.
• D. M. Young and B. Vona, "Parallel multilevel methods," Studies in Computer Science, Rice and Demillo (Eds.), Plenum Press, New York, 1994.
• D. M. Young and B. Vona, "On the use of rational iterative methods for solving large sparse linear systems," Applied Numerical Mathematics, vol. 10, pp. 261-278, 1992.