Richard E. Bellman
Richard Ernest Bellman | |
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Los Angeles, California , U.S. | |
Alma mater |
|
Known for | Rand Corporation Stanford University |
Thesis | On the Boundedness of Solutions of Non-Linear Differential and Difference Equations[1] |
Doctoral advisor | Solomon Lefschetz[1] |
Doctoral students | Christine Shoemaker[1] |
Richard Ernest Bellman[2] (August 26, 1920 – March 19, 1984) was an American applied mathematician, who introduced dynamic programming in 1953, and made important contributions in other fields of mathematics, such as biomathematics. He founded the leading biomathematical journal Mathematical Biosciences, as well as the Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications.
Biography
Bellman was born in 1920 in
Later in life, Richard Bellman's interests began to emphasize biology and medicine, which he identified as "the frontiers of contemporary science". In 1967, he became founding editor of the journal
Bellman was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 1973, which was removed but resulted in complications that left him severely disabled. He was a professor at the University of Southern California, a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1975),[9] a member of the National Academy of Engineering (1977),[10] and a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1983).
He was awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1979, "for contributions to decision processes and control system theory, particularly the creation and application of dynamic programming".[11] His key work is the Bellman equation.
Work
Bellman equation
A
Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation
The
Curse of dimensionality
The curse of dimensionality is an expression coined by Bellman to describe the problem caused by the exponential increase in
Bellman–Ford algorithm
Though discovering the algorithm after Ford he is referred to in the
Publications
Over the course of his career he published 619 papers and 39 books. During the last 11 years of his life he published over 100 papers despite suffering from crippling complications of brain surgery (Dreyfus, 2003). A selection:[4]
- 1957. Dynamic Programming
- 1959. Asymptotic Behavior of Solutions of Differential Equations
- 1961. An Introduction to Inequalities
- 1961. Adaptive Control Processes: A Guided Tour
- 1962. Applied Dynamic Programming
- 1967. Introduction to the Mathematical Theory of Control Processes
- 1970. Algorithms, Graphs and Computers
- 1972. Dynamic Programming and Partial Differential Equations
- 1982. Mathematical Aspects of Scheduling and Applications
- 1983. Mathematical Methods in Medicine
- 1984. Partial Differential Equations
- 1984. Eye of the Hurricane: An Autobiography, World Scientific Publishing.
- 1985. Artificial Intelligence
- 1995. Modern Elementary Differential Equations
- 1997. Introduction to Matrix Analysis
- 2003. Dynamic Programming
- 2003. Perturbation Techniques in Mathematics, Engineering and Physics
- 2003. Stability Theory of Differential Equations (originally publ. 1953)[15]
References
- ^ a b c Richard E. Bellman at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- ^ Richard Bellman's Biography
- ISBN 9789971500900.
He was raised by his father to be a religious skeptic. He was taken to a different church every week to observe different ceremonies. He was struck by the contrast between the ideals of various religions and the history of cruelty and hypocrisy done in God's name. He was well aware of the intellectual giants who believed in God, but if asked, he would say that each person had to make their own choice. Statements such as "By the State of New York and God ..." struck him as ludicrous. From his childhood he recalled a particularly unpleasant scene between his parents just before they sent him to the store. He ran down the street saying over and over again, "I wish there was a God, I wish there was a God."
- ^ a b c Salvador Sanabria. Richard Bellman profile at http://www-math.cudenver.edu; retrieved October 3, 2008.
- ^ Bellman biodata at history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk; retrieved August 10, 2013.
- ISBN 9789814635707. Retrieved 5 July 2021.
Naturally, I was raised as an atheist. This was quite easy since the only one in the family that had any religion was my grandmother, and she was of German stock. Although she believed in God, and went to the synagogue on the high holy days, there was no nonsense about ritual. I well remember when I went off to the army, she said, "God will protect you." I smiled politely. She added, "I know you don't believe in God, but he will protect you anyway." I know many sophisticated and highly intelligent people who are practicing Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Mormons, Hindus, Buddhists, etc., feel strongly that religion, or lack of it, is a highly personal matter. My own attitude is like Lagrange's. One day, he was asked by Napoleon whether he believed in God. "Sire," he said, "I have no need of that hypothesis."
- ^ Mathematics Genealogy Project
- ^ Bellman R: An introduction to the theory of dynamic programming RAND Corp. Report 1953 (Based on unpublished researches from 1949. It contained the first statement of the principle of optimality)
- ^ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved April 6, 2011.
- ^ "NAE Members Directory – Dr. Richard Bellman profile". NAE. Retrieved April 6, 2011.
- IEEE. Retrieved April 6, 2011.
- ISBN 978-0-262-31202-8.
- ISBN 9780486488561.
- ^ Richard Bellman (1961). Adaptive control processes: a guided tour. Princeton University Press.
- .
Further reading
- Bellman, Richard (1984). Eye of the Hurricane: An Autobiography, World Scientific.
- Stuart Dreyfus (2002). "Richard Bellman on the Birth of Dynamic Programming". In: Operations Research. Vol. 50, No. 1, Jan–Feb 2002, pp. 48–51.
- J.J. O'Connor and E.F. Robertson (2005). Biography of Richard Bellman from the MacTutor History of Mathematics.
- Stuart Dreyfus (2003) "Richard Ernest Bellman". In: International Transactions in Operational Research. Vol 10, no. 5, pp. 543–545.
Articles
- Bellman, R.E, Kalaba, R.E, Dynamic Programming and Feedback Control, RAND Corporation, P-1778, 1959.
External links
- "IEEE Global History Network – Richard Bellman". IEEE. 14 August 2017. Retrieved April 6, 2011.
- Harold J. Kushner's speech on Richard Bellman, when accepting the Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award (click on "2004: Harold J. Kushner")
- IEEE biography
- Richard E. Bellman at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- Author profile in the database zbMATH
- Biography of Richard Bellman from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)