Lars Erik Persson

Lars-Erik Persson (born 24 September 1944) is a Swedish professor in mathematics, which is especially known for his works in Fourier analysis, function spaces, inequalities, interpolation theory and related problems connected to convexity and quasi-monotone functions.

Persson comes from the small village Svanabyn in Dorotea community, Sweden. As a miracle at that time and in this situation he got the possibility to continue his studies. He received his PhD degree in mathematics at Umeå University in 1974. In 1975 he was permanently employed as assistant professor in mathematics at Luleå University of Technology (LTU), where he was appointed as full professor in 1994. Before that, he was appointed as full professor at Narvik University College (HIN) in 1992. He has also worked many years as part-time professor at Uppsala University, where he is now professor emeritus. He is also appointed as honorary professor at L.N.Gumilyov Eurasian National University in Kazakhstan. At the moment he works as professor at HIN and LTU.

Persson has been a supervisor for 52 students with PhD exams and is at the moment supervisor for eight more PhD students. He has been author or co-author of around 250 papers in Journals and 20 books. He is Editor of eight international Journals. He has been President of the Swedish Mathematical Society and also ordinary member from 1995 (secretary during 1995–2002) of the National Committee of Mathematics equipped with the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Up to 2014 he was the chairman of the board NT-R (Mathematics and Technical Mathematics) at the Swedish Research Council, which is a government agency that distributes the funding for basic research of the highest quality in Sweden. He initiated and was first director of Center of Interdisciplinary Mathematics (CIM) at Uppsala University.

Persson is internationally very well known. For example, he has around 160 coauthors from 40 different countries. Maybe the most well known of these co-authors is Jacques-Louis Lions. The PhD students in his well-known international school come from 10 different countries. He is editor of eight international journals. He has also been invited as guest researcher to a great number of universities in around 15 different countries; for example, in November 2015 he is invited to Collège de France by Fieldsmedalist Pierre-Louis Lions.