Royal Society award for Manchester mathematician

12 Sep 2013

Beyer Professor of Applied Mathematics David Abrahams has received a prestigious Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award

Jointly funded by the Wolfson Foundation and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the scheme aims to provide universities with additional support to enable them to attract science talent from overseas and retain respected UK scientists of outstanding achievement and potential.

Professor I. David Abrahams is an applied mathematician specialising in the analysis of real engineering problems involving the propagation and scattering of waves in continuous media.

A good deal of his current work is motivated and supported by industry. It concerns the mathematical modelling of complex materials, for example, fibre-reinforced or particle-filled components. Such composites are now commonly found in the aircraft and underwater vehicle industries, and it is essential to model, analyse and predict the way sound or other waves propagate through them. His research has applications in the fields of water waves, non-destructive testing of materials, seismology, fibre optics, hydroacoustics, and is also relevant to biological and medical applications.

Professor Abrahams plays a valuable role within the international mathematics community, serving on over thirty national and international working parties, panels and committees over the last decade. He is currently Deputy Chair for panel B10 (Mathematics) in the forthcoming REF2014.

Professor Abrahams said “This award will allow me to continue to work with colleagues, postdoctoral research assistants and research students at Manchester on the mathematics underpinning wave propagation through materials with complex microstructure. I also aim to apply the tools developed in this area to other branches of mathematics and physics.”