User:Cgomez45/sandbox

Dr. Kadir Aziz (1923–2016) was a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He passed away on March 25, 2016 at the age of 92.

Background

Kadir Aziz was born in 1923 in Afghanistan, but grew up in Paris where he received his early education. He obtained his bachelor's degree in Washington DC at the Wilson Teachers College in 1952 and in 1954 he received his Master's degree from George Washington University. Soon after he enrolled in the doctoral program in mathematics at the University of Maryland with his doctoral dissertation titled "On Higher Order Boundary Value Problems for Hyperbolic Partial Differential Equations in Two and Three Variables"

Career

After obtaining his PhD, Aziz accepted a faculty position at Georgetown University where he would become a full Professor of Mathematics in 1966. He became the Department Chairman of Georgetown University in 1966. In 1967 he would move to UMBC where he would be appointed as the Adjunct Research Professor at the institute of Physical Science and Technology. He would maintain this position until he passed away in 2016.

Achievements

In the field of numerical analysis of partial differential equations, Aziz is known for the Finite Element Method (FEM), a powerful tool for treating number problems of physics, engineering and other sciences. A book edited by Aziz, with a monograph written by him and Ivo Babuska, are a standard reference on the subject of FEM. Aziz's research was backed by grants from the National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Department of Energy, and the Naval Surface Weapons Center

Contributions

Kadir Aziz was also well known for giving back to his community. For example, he supervised the dissertations of 14 doctoral students from universities he had taught at. In 1999 he would donate his funds to create the Aziz Lecture Series, which was created to provide expository lectures by experts in his of field of numerical solutions of differential equations. One to two Aziz lectures have been uploaded every year since the creation of the series. He would also fund the Aziz Mathematics Scholarship for students at UMBC. It is the math department's highest award of excellence for non-math majors and is still being funded to this day.