Title
Stetter, Hans J. SIAM oral history
Catalog Number
102746810
Type
Document
Description
Hans Stetter was born in Germany and lived in Munich until the age of 35. Although he spent one year as an undergraduate exchange student at the Agricultural College of Colorado and was awarded an honorable mention in the Putnam exam. He was always confident in his mathematical talent even before he entered school, and was self-motivated in his mathematical studies. He attended the Technical University of Munich with the goal of becoming a school teacher. After obtaining his Masters, a crucial event changed his life. Robert Sauer offered him a research position working on numerical methods and computing for fluids. He describes his work with Sauer, and discusses the beginnings of numerical analysis and computing in Germany. After, his thesis on numerical flow about wings, he worked on numerical methods for hyperbolic partial differential equations, and then switched to numerical methods for ordinary differential equations which he found underdeveloped at the time. He comments on the impact he had on this field, and discusses the role of numerical experimentation and intuition in numerical work. In the last part of the interview, he describes his introduction to and subsequent work in numerical polynomial algebra.
Date
2005-06-08
Contributor
|
Davis, Philip, Interviewer
|
|
Stetter, Hans, Interviewee
|
Publisher
SIAM and U.S. Department of Energy
Place of Publication
Vienna, Austria
Extent
37 p.
Format
PDF
Copyright Holder
Computer History Museum
Category
Transcription
Subject
Numerical analysis; Fluid flow; PERM (Programmierbare Elektronische Rechenmaschine München) computer; Hyperbolic partial differential equations; Ordinary differential equation (ODE); High-order finite difference methods; Richardson extrapolation; Defect correction; Numerical polynomial algebra
Collection Title
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) oral history collection
Credit
Gift of SIAM and the US Department of Energy
