L. Ridgway Scott

L. Ridgway Scott has been Professor of Computer Science and of Mathematics at the University of Chicago since 1998, and the Louis Block Professor since 2001. He obtained the B.S. from Tulane University in 1969 and the Ph.D. degree in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1973.

Professor Scott was a founding member of the Advanced Computer Architecture Laboratory at University of Michigan, an early center for the study of parallel computing and a “beta-site” for one of the first-generation of hypercube computers, the nCUBE-1. He also helped to establish a program in parallel scientific computing at the Pennsylvania State University, which became a “beta-site” for the second-generation Intel hypercube, the iPSC-2. He co-founded what later became the W. G. Pritchard Fluid Mechanics Laboratory at Penn State.

At the University of Chicago, Professor Scott is continuing his research in all of these areas. He was a Member of the Executive Committee of the ASCI Flash Center and is a founding member of the Institute for Biophysical Dynam- ics at the University of Chicago. He was a founding co-Director of the Argonne/Chicago Computation Institute which was established in spring, 1999. He was also the director of the University of Chicago partnership in the The National Partership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI) based at SCSC/UCSD.

Professor Scott has published over one hundred thirty papers, and three books, extending over biophysics, parallel computing and fundamental computational aspects of structural mechanics, fluid dynamics, nuclear engineering, and computational chemistry. This includes boundary element, finite difference, finite element and spectral techniques for solving partial differential equations.

Sample publications

• V. Girault and L. Ridgway Scott, Finite element discretizations of a two-dimensional grade-two fluid model. MMAN, 35:1007-1053, 2001.
• V. Girault and L. Ridgway Scott, Analysis of a two-dimensional grade-two fluid model with a tangential boundary condition. J. Math. Pures Appl., 78:981-1011, 1999.
• J. L. Bona, W. G. Pritchard, and L. R. Scott, Numerical schemes for a model for nonlinear dispersive waves. J. Comp Phys., 60:167-186, 1985.
• J. L. Bona, W. G. Pritchard, and L. R. Scott, A comparison of solutions of two model equations for long waves. In Fluid Dynamics in Astrophysics and Geophysics, N. R. Lebovitz, ed., volume 20, pages 235-267. Providence: Amer. Math. Soc., 1983.
• J. L. Bona, W. G. Pritchard, and L. R. Scott, An evaluation of a model equation for water waves. Philos. Trans. Roy. Soc. London Ser. A 302, pages 457-510, 1981.
• J. L. Bona, W. G. Pritchard, and L. R. Scott, Solitary-wave interaction. Physics of Fluids, 23:438-441, 1980.