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James A. Yorke
photo by A. La Porta Distinguished University
Professor of Mathematics and Physics Chair of Mathematics, |
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A.B., Hobby: photography James Yorke came to the University of
Maryland as a math graduate student in 1963 hoping to explore
interdisciplinary mathematics. Those hopes were fully realized after he ear
ned his Ph.D. and joined the faculty of
UMD’s IPST, an Institute established in 1950 and committed to
interdisciplinary research in the sciences. A degree in mathematics is a license to
explore the universe. His current
research projects range from chaos theory and weather prediction and
genome research and the population dynamics of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. His
chaos research is primarily on period doubling cascades and partial control
of chaos. He acknowledges the benefits of having superb collaborators! Prof. Yorke has supervised over 40 Ph.D. dissertations
in the Depts. of Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science. Dr. Yorke's Curriculum Vitae includes a list of over 300 publications,
many with abstracts, and is available online, as is a list of those most frequently cited. He is perhaps best known to the general public
for coining the mathematical term "chaos" with T.Y. Li in a 1975
paper entitled "Period
Three Implies Chaos". "Chaos" is a mathematical concept
for processes that vary according to precise deterministic laws but appear to
behave in random fashion. The University's
chaos research group, is one of the best in the world. Yorke aims at
describing those robust properties that are common in the dynamics of
physical, biological, and chemical systems. Sometimes he describes the
phenomena using rigorous mathematics, and sometimes only via phenomenological
descriptions from intensive numerical studies. Most often, the research is a
blend of numerical and rigorous techniques. Professor Yorke has coauthored three books
on chaos and a monograph
on gonorrhea epidemiology: · Dynamics: Numerical Explorations (written with Helena Nusse) on computational aspects of chaos· Coping with Chaos (written with Edward Ott and Tim Sauer) is a collection of reprints focusing on how scientists observe, quantify, and control chaos.·
Chaos:
An Introduction to Dynamical Systems (written with Kathleen Alligood
and Tim Sauer) -- an interdisciplinary math text for seniors and beginning
graduate students.
Main
hobby: photography See also
Yorke
on Youtube: Chaos and Fractals in
Simple Physical Systems I Chaos and Fractals in
Simple Physical Systems II Chaos and Fractals in
Simple Physical Systems III Some papers and preprints, and Dynamics Software, and Math452 (chaos); An
interview on “The Connection” a PBS radio show; An interview
by Tim Sauer on the Dynamical Systems Web Portal; An interview by
Isabel S. Labouriau (Univ. of Porto) in Bulletin of the Math 410,
Advanced Calculus, Spring 2006. Contact Information:
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