Gheorghe Moroșanu

Gheorghe Moroșanu (born April 30, 1950, in Darabani, Botoșani County) is a Romanian mathematician known for his works in ordinary differential equations, partial differential equations and other branches of mathematics. He earned his PhD in 1981 from the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iași, Romania.

He is currently affiliated with the Central European University, Budapest (an international English-language university, accredited in the USA), after previously holding positions at the University of Stuttgart and the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iași, Romania.

Among several administrative positions, he served as chairman of the Mathematics Department of the Central European University during the period 2004-2012. In 2008 he was appointed as egyetemi tanár (the highest academic title in Hungarian higher education) by the President of Hungary.

Before his university studies, during the 12-year period of education from primary to high school (1957-1969), Gheorghe Moroșanu was at the top of his class each academic year and demonstrated a keen interest in mathematics. In 1969 he started studying mathematics at the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iaşi, Romania. He was the first to earn a PhD of his class of over 150 graduates. His dissertation Qualitative Problems for Nonlinear Differential Equations of Accretive Type in Banach Spaces included original results published in top-ranked journals (Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Journal of Differential Equations, Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications, Nonlinear Analysis, Numerical Functional Analysis and Optimization).

Gheorghe Moroșanu is the author and co-author of a great number of research articles and several textbooks and monographs. His monograph on nonlinear evolution equations is mainly focused on the stability theory for such equations. In the preface of this monograph, Professor Michiel Hazewinkel (Series Editor) states that

the theory of stability of ordinary differential equations contains the germs for a theory of stability of nonlinear evolution semigroups ... This book is devoted to a self-contained systematic exposition of these matters and incorporates many of the author's own substantial results in the field.

This book has been followed by a series of related papers, including his articles on second-order evolution equations governed by monotone operators. These publications provide a complete answer to the long-standing existence question in the non-homogeneous case.

Note also that both his joint monograph on functional methods and that on singular perturbations contain original material mostly due to the authors, bringing new ideas and methods that are useful in exploring mathematical models described by linear and nonlinear differential equations. In particular the book on singular perturbations combines results from different parts of mathematics to offer a detailed asymptotic analysis of some important classes of singularly perturbed boundary value problems which are mathematical models for various phenomena in biology, chemistry, engineering. This book has been followed by further related works, including the joint papers on singular perturbation problems associated with semi-linear evolution equations.

Moroșanu has also works in Calculus of Variations, Fluid Mechanics, etc. More specifically, his legacy of contributions concerns (but is not limited to) the following topics:

• first and second-order evolution equations in Hilbert spaces;

• initial-boundary value problems for parabolic and hyperbolic partial differential equations and systems (existence, high regularity, stability of solutions, time periodic solutions);

• singular perturbation theory for nonlinear partial differential equations and semilinear evolution equations in Hilbert spaces;

• boundary value problems for elliptic equations, including equations involving p-Laplacians, related eigenvalue problems;

• nonlinear ordinary differential equations, integro-differential equations, delay differential equations, equations involving ordinary p-Laplacians;

• monotone operators, nonlinear differential operators;

• difference equations in Hilbert spaces, including proximal point algorithms;

• the Fourier method for solving abstract evolution equations;

• optimization, input identifiability, optimal control;

• applications in acoustics, capillarity theory, diffusion processes, fluid flows, hydraulics, integrated circuits, mathematical biology and ecology, nonlinear oscillators, phase field equations, self-organized systems, telegraph systems, etc.

In 1983 he was awarded the Gheorghe Lazăr Prize of the Romanian Academy in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the theory of hyperbolic partial differential equations.

He also holds an honorary doctorate from Ovidius University, Constanța, Romania.

A school (in Darabani) Moroșanu himself attended between 1957 and 1965 has been named after him since 2007, when he also received the title of honorary citizen of Darabani in recognition of his accomplishments.