10/05/2007 - 12:00am

We are pleased to announce that the 7th Feng Kang Prize for 2007 has been awarded to:

Dr. Xiao-Ping Wang Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Dr. Lin-Bo Zhang Institute of Computational Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Dr. Hong-Kai Zhao University of California, Irvine

for their significant contributions in Computational Mathematics and Computer Science.

Professor Zhong-Ci SHI, Chairman

The Feng Kang Prize of Scientific Computing

October 5, 2007

Background on the Feng Kang Prize

Since 1995, the Feng Kang Prize of Scientific Computing has honored young Chinese scientists in China and abroad for their significant contributions in the broad areas of scientific computing every other year. The award is being managed by the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Scientific/Engineering Computing, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Winners are rewarded with a premium of 20,000 Chinese Yuan each.

The Feng Kang Prize is dedicated to the memory of the late Professor Feng Kang, the founder and pioneer of Chinese computational mathematics. He was a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences, a professor and the founding director of the Computing Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His work on sympletic methods was awarded the First Prize of National Natural Science Award of China.

In the later 1950s and early 1960s, based on the computations of dam constructions, Professor Feng proposed a systematic numerical method for solving partial differential equations. The method was called Finite difference method based on variation principle. This method was also independently invented in the West, called there the finite element method. It is now considered that the invention of the finite element method is a milestone of computational mathematics. In the 1970s Professor Feng gave embedding theories in the discontinuous finite element space, and generalized classical theory on elliptic equations to various dimensional combinations, which provided a mathematical foundation for elastic composite structures.