| Nicholas Higham | |
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Nick Higham in 2005
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| Born | 25 December 1961 Salford |
| Residence | UK |
| Citizenship | British |
| Fields | Numerical analysis |
| Institutions | University of Manchester |
| Alma mater | Victoria University of Manchester (B.A. 1982, Ph.D. 1985) |
| Doctoral advisor | George Hall |
| Doctoral students | Awad Al-Mohy Sheung Hun Cheng Anthony Cox Philip Davies Gareth Hargreaves Hyun Kim Philip Knight Lijing Lin Craig Lucas D. Mackey Pythagoras Papadimitriou Harikrishna Patel Matthew Smith |
| Notable awards | Alston S. Householder Award VI (1987) Leslie Fox Prize for Numerical Analysis (1988) Junior Whitehead Prize (1999) Fellow of the Royal Society (2007) Fröhlich Prize (2008) |
Nicholas John Higham FRS (born Salford 25 December 1961[1]) is a numerical analyst and Richardson Professor of Applied Mathematics at the School of Mathematics, University of Manchester.
He is a graduate of the Victoria University of Manchester gaining his BA in 1982, MSc in and 1983 and PhD 1985. His PhD thesis was entitled Nearness Problems in Numerical Linear Algebra and his supervisor was George Hall. Higham is Director of Research within the School of Mathematics, Director of the Manchester Institute for Mathematical Sciences (MIMS), and Head of the Numerical Analysis Group. He held a prestigious Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award (2003–2008) and as of 2006[update] is on the Institute for Scientific Information Highly Cited Researcher list.[2]
Higham is best known for his work on the accuracy and stability of numerical algorithms. He has more than 85 refereed publications on topics such as rounding error analysis, linear systems, least squares problems, matrix functions and nonlinear matrix equations, condition number estimation, and generalized eigenvalue problems. He has contributed software to LAPACK and the NAG library, and has contributed code included in the MATLAB distribution.
Higham is a member of the editorial boards of the journals Linear Algebra and its Applications, SIAM Journal on Matrix Analysis and Applications, IMA Journal of Numerical Analysis], Numerical Algorithms, and Foundations of Computational Mathematics.
His honours include the Alston S. Householder Award VI, 1987 (for the best Ph.D. thesis in numerical algebra 1984—1987), the 1988 Leslie Fox Prize for Numerical Analysis, a 1999 Junior Whitehead Prize from the London Mathematical Society. He was elected as Fellow of the Royal Society in 2007.[3] In 2008 he was awarded the Fröhlich Prize in recognition of 'his leading contributions to numerical linear algebra and numerical stability analysis'.[4]
Higham has authored several books including Accuracy and Stability of Numerical Algorithms (2nd edition 2002), Handbook of Writing for the Mathematical Sciences (2nd edition, 1998), and MATLAB Guide (with his brother D.J. Higham, 2nd edition, 2005).