4:19 p.m., July 12, 2007--Russell Luke, assistant professor of mathematical sciences, coauthored a new book, Experimental Mathematics in Action, which presents case studies in the practice of modern mathematical research and illustrates the evolution of proof and computation in mathematics.

“The last 20 years have been witness to a fundamental shift in the way mathematics is practiced,” Luke, of Newark, said. “With the continued advance of computing power and accessibility, the view that 'real mathematicians don't compute' no longer has any traction for a newer generation of mathematicians that can really take advantage of computer-aided research, especially given the scope and availability of modern computational packages, such as Maple, Mathematica and MATLAB.”
The book, also coauthored by David Bailey of Lawrence Berkeley Labs, Jonathan Borwein of Dalhousie University, Neil Calkin of Clemson University, Roland Girgensohn of Technical University of Munich and Victor Moll of Tulane University, provides a coherent variety of accessible examples of modern mathematics subjects in which intelligent computing plays a significant role.

“Computing is to mathematics as the telescope is to astronomy: it might not explain things, but it certainly shows 'what's out there.' The authors are expert in the discovery of new mathematical 'planets,' and this book is a beautifully written exposé of their values, their methods, their subject, and their enthusiasm about it. A must read,” Herbert S. Wilf, Thomas A. Scott Professor of Mathematics Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Generatingfunctionology, said.

Luke's research interests are applied analysis, numerical optimization, convex and nonsmooth analysis, number theory, mathematical imaging, signal processing, optics and scattering theory.

Luke, who joined UD in 2004, earned his bachelor's degree with honors in applied mathematics at the University of California-Berkeley in 1991. He received a master's degree and a doctorate in applied mathematics from the University of Washington in Seattle and was a NASA/GSFC Graduate Student Research Fellow from 1998-2001.

In 2001, Luke joined the Institute for Numerical and Applied Mathematics at the University of Göttingen in Germany, where he worked on inverse scattering theory and research cooperation with industry partners. In 2002, Luke moved to Simon Fraser University near Vancouver, Canada, where he taught as a PIMS Fellow and did research on applications of variational and nonsmooth analysis.

Luke is a member of the American Mathematical Society, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a reviewer for Mathematical Reviews, as well as international journals in optics and mathematics.

Article by Martin Mbugua
Photo by Kathy Atkinson