Role Mathematician Name Chia-Chiao Lin | Nationality United States | |
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Born 7 July 1916Peking, China ( 1916-07-07 ) Institutions CaltechBrown UniversityMIT Alma mater California Institute of TechnologyUniversity of TorontoTsinghua University Doctoral students Phyllis FoxLee SegelFrank Shu Books Mathematics Applied to Deterministic Problems in the Natural Sciences, Statistical Theories of Turbulence Notable awards | ||
Doctoral advisor Theodore von Karman | ||
Chia-Chiao Lin (Chinese: 林家翹; 7 July 1916 – 13 January 2013) was a Chinese-born American applied mathematician and Institute Professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Biography
Although Lin was born in Beijing, his ancestral roots were from Fuzhou. In 1937 Lin graduated from the department of physics, National Tsinghua University in Beijing. After graduation he did assistant teaching in the Tsinghua University physics department. In 1939 Lin joined the Boxer Rebellion Indemnity Scholarship Program and initially was supported to study in the United Kingdom. However, due to the furious warfare of World War II, Lin and the other several were sent to North America by ship. Unluckily, Lin's ship was stopped in Kobe, Japan, and all students had to return to China. In 1940 Lin finally reached Canada and studied at the University of Toronto. In 1941 Lin earned his M.Sc. from the University of Toronto.
Lin continued his studies in the United States and received his PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 1944 under Theodore von Kármán. Lin also taught at Caltech between 1943 and 1945. He taught at Brown University between 1945 and 1947. Lin joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1947. Lin was promoted to professor at MIT in 1953 and became an Institute Professor of MIT in 1963. Lin retired from MIT in 1987.
Lin made major contributions to the theory of hydrodynamic stability, turbulent flow, mathematics, and astrophysics.
He was President of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics from 1972 to 1974.
Honors and awards
During his career Lin has received many prizes and awards, including:
Lin was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, cited in the American Men and Women of Science. and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Lin was elected Academician of Academia Sinica in 1958, and became a Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1994.
He died, aged 96, in Beijing.