Leslie Greengard — LLMpedia

Leslie Greengard
Name	Leslie Greengard
Birth date	1957
Birth place	New York City
Nationality	American
Fields	Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Computational Science
Workplaces	New York University, Courant Institute, Princeton University, Yale University, IBM
Alma mater	Harvard University, Yale University
Doctoral advisor	Vladimir Rokhlin

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Leslie Greengard is an American mathematician and computational scientist known for contributions to numerical analysis, scientific computing, and applied mathematics. He has held positions at leading institutions including New York University, Princeton University, and Yale University, and his work intersects with researchers and institutions such as Vladimir Rokhlin, John von Neumann, Richard Courant, Stanford University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Greengard's research has influenced areas connected to Peter Lax, Claude Shannon, Norbert Wiener, Alan Turing, and collaborations reaching into projects associated with IBM and the National Science Foundation.

Early life and education

Greengard was born in New York City and completed undergraduate studies at Harvard University, where he studied under influences connected to figures such as Andrew Gleason, John Tate, Raoul Bott, George Dantzig, and Isadore Singer. He earned a Ph.D. from Yale University under the supervision of Vladimir Rokhlin, situating him within a lineage that includes scholars like Joseph Fourier, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Bernhard Riemann, Srinivasa Ramanujan, and David Hilbert. During his formative years he interacted with research environments linked to Courant Institute, Bell Labs, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Argonne National Laboratory.

Greengard began his professional appointments with affiliations at Yale University and later at the Courant Institute of New York University. He has held visiting and faculty roles at Princeton University and collaborations with researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Caltech, Columbia University, and University of California, Berkeley. His administrative and programmatic work connected him with organizations such as the National Science Foundation, Simons Foundation, DOE, NSF centers, and initiatives involving DARPA. Greengard supervised students and postdocs who went on to positions at institutions like University of Michigan, University of Chicago, Cornell University, University of Cambridge, Oxford University, and ETH Zurich.

Greengard is best known for co-developing the fast multipole method (FMM) with Vladimir Rokhlin, a numerical algorithm that transformed computations in fields linked to James Clerk Maxwell, Isaac Newton, Leonhard Euler, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, and Pierre-Simon Laplace. The FMM reduced the complexity of N-body problems and has applications across disciplines involving work by Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Paul Dirac, Enrico Fermi, and Michael Faraday. His research spans numerical linear algebra, integral equations, and fast algorithms used in studies associated with Navier–Stokes equations research groups, Maxwell's equations solvers, and computational projects at NASA, NOAA, and European Space Agency. Greengard contributed to spectral methods and boundary integral techniques intersecting with themes from S. Chandrasekhar and Ludwig Prandtl, and influenced software efforts akin to those at LLNL, Sandia National Laboratories, and National Center for Supercomputing Applications. His interdisciplinary collaborations reached into computational biology projects referencing work by Francis Crick, James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, David Baker, and genomics modeling at Broad Institute-style centers. Greengard's methods have been incorporated into high-performance computing frameworks used by teams at ANL and ORNL and have been cited alongside contributions from Gene Golub, Jacques-Louis Lions, Tony Chan, Paul Rabinowitz, and Gilbert Strang.

Greengard's recognition includes honors and awards from bodies such as the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, SIAM (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics), and AMS (American Mathematical Society). He has received prizes comparable to those awarded to scientists like John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener, with fellowships and grants from institutions including MacArthur Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, Simons Foundation, and the Department of Energy. His contributions to the fast multipole method have been celebrated in conferences organized by ICERM, IAMP, ICIAM, SIAM Annual Meeting, and symposia honoring mathematicians such as Vladimir Arnold, Andrew Wiles, Cédric Villani, and Terence Tao.

Greengard's personal and professional networks connect him to figures and institutions including New York City, Princeton, Yale, Harvard, and collaborative centers tied to Bell Labs, IBM, and major research laboratories. Outside academia he has engaged with scientific communities and events featuring speakers like Steven Weinberg, Murray Gell-Mann, Leon Lederman, Mileva Marić-related historical discussions, and public science outreach comparable to lectures at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and museums such as American Museum of Natural History. He maintains ties with professional societies including SIAM, AMS, AAAS, and international networks in Europe and Asia.