Rate My Professor Michael G. Crandall

Michael G. Crandall is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mathematics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he joined as Professor in 1988. He earned a B.S. in Engineering Physics in 1962, an M.A. in Mathematics in 1964, and a Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1965, all from the University of California, Berkeley. His doctoral research under Heinz Cordes addressed two families of plane solutions of the four-body problem in celestial mechanics. Crandall's early career included an instructorship at Berkeley (1965-1966), assistant professorship at Stanford University (1966-1969), positions at UCLA from assistant professor (1969-1970) through full professor (1973-1976), and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as professor (1974-1984) and Hille Professor of Mathematics (1984-1990). He also held visiting positions at the Universities of Paris 6 and 9, served as occasional Acting Director of the Mathematics Research Center at Wisconsin (1980-1988), Director of the IAC Program in Nonlinear Sciences at UCSB (1988-1992), Chair of the UCSB Graduate Council (1992-1993), and Chair of the UCSB Mathematics Department (1993-1996).

Crandall's research centers on partial differential equations, nonlinear evolution equations, semigroups of nonlinear transformations in Banach spaces, Hamilton-Jacobi equations, and the infinity Laplace equation. He co-developed the theory of viscosity solutions with Pierre-Louis Lions, fundamentally impacting nonlinear PDE analysis. Key publications include the book Semigroups of Nonlinear Transformations in Banach Spaces (1971), Nonlinear Evolution Equations (editor, 1978), "Viscosity Solutions of Hamilton-Jacobi Equations" (1983, with P.-L. Lions, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society), "User’s Guide to Viscosity Solutions of Second Order Partial Differential Equations" (1992, with H. Ishii and P.-L. Lions, Bulletin of the AMS), "Optimal Lipschitz Extensions and the Infinity Laplacian" (2000, with L.C. Evans and R. Gariepy), and "A Tour of the Theory of Absolutely Minimizing Functions" (2004, with G. Aronsson and P. Juutinen, Bulletin of the AMS). Crandall delivered an Invited Lecture at the 1974 International Congress of Mathematicians and the Progress in Mathematics Lecture for the AMS in 1990. His honors include the Leroy P. Steele Prize from the American Mathematical Society (1999) for seminal contributions, election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2000), the National Academy of Sciences (2023), Fellow of the AMS (2012), and Docteur Honoris Causa from Université Paris-Dauphine (1999). He has served on numerous editorial boards, including as Managing Editor of Communications in Partial Differential Equations (1989-1993).