Michael J. D. Powell Memorial (2015)

Who was Powell?

Michael James David Powell FRS [1] was "a British numerical analyst who was among the pioneers of computational mathematics" [2]. He was the inventor/early contributor of quasi-Newton method, trust region method, augmented Lagrangian method, and SQP method. Each of them is a pillar of modern numerical optimization. He also made significant contributions to approximation theory and methods.

Among numerous honors, Powell was one of the first two recipients of the Dantzig Prize [3] from the Mathematical Programming Society (MOS) and Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). This is considered the highest award in optimization.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_J._D._Powell

[2] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsbm.201...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dantzig_Prize