Douglas N. Arnold

McKnight Presidential Professor of Mathematics
School of Mathematics, University of Minnesota

I am a mathematician and an educator. My research mostly concerns numerical analysis, partial differential equations, mechanics, and the interplay between these fields. Much of my recent effort has been directed toward the development of the finite element exterior calculus. In 2009 and 2010 I served as president of SIAM, the largest applied mathematics and computational science professional organization in the world. From 2001 to 2008 I directed the IMA, the world's leading interdisciplinary mathematical research institute.

• Contact information
• CV • Biosketch • Photos • Editorial boards
• Research • Publications • Talks
• Simons Collaboration on Localization of Waves
• Education, outreach, PhD students

• Finite Element Exterior Calculus (SIAM book)
• The Periodic Table of the Finite Elements
• Arnold Family Lecture series
• Scholarly publishing and research integrity
• Möbius Transformations Revealed video

I was awarded the Peter Henrici prize at the International Congress of Industrial and Applied Mathematics in Tokyo on August 20, 2023, cited for “fundamental contributions of extraordinary originality, depth, and impact to the finite element analysis of partial differential equations, ranking amongst the classics in numerical analysis literature”.

In a SIAM News article entitled Remembering Ivo Babuška, I recall the extraordinary life and achievements of Ivo Babuška, who passed away in 2023 at the age of 97. Ivo was the preeminent authority on the finite element method and one of the creators of the field of computational science and engineering. There is also a PDF version of the article.

I am a principal investigator of the Simons Collaboration on the Localization of Waves, an international group of leading mathematicians and physicists working together on some of the most compelling puzzles in modern condensed matter physics, with the support of the Simons Foundation.