About the Lecturer Prize
The Frederic and Julia Wan Lecturer Prize is established to honor Frederic and Julia Wan in recognition of their generous contributions and services to the Department of Applied Mathematics. The endowments they have helped establish to support our faculty and students can be found in the Support Applied Math section of this website. Please support us if you wish to contribute to these funds.
The Lecturer Prize aims to invite renowned mathematicians to visit the department over an extended period, usually one week. The lecturer is expected to deliver three lectures ranging from technical talks to experts to expository talks. Additionally, the lecturer actively engages with members of the department and the broader UW community.
Upcoming Lectures
Nick Trefethen, Harvard University
- Tuesday, May 13, 2025
4PM in 205 Smith Hall:
The AAA Algorithm for Rational Approximation - Thursday, May 15, 2025
4PM in 205 Smith Hall:
From Rational Approximation to Helmholtz Scattering - Friday, May 16, 2025
Joint MATH/AMATH Colloquium
3:30PM in ECE 125:
Fifteen Images for Discussion
Previous Awardees
- Spring 2023: Qing Nie, Department of Mathematic and the NSF-Simons Center for Multiscale Cell Fate (CMCF) Research, University of California, Irvine
About Frederic Wan
Frederic Y.M. Wan was born in 1936 in Shanghai, China, first born of Olga Pearl Jung and Wai-nam Wan. Living with sister Ruth and her husband Robert Chinn's family, Frederic graduated from Seattle’s Garfield High. He went east to earn undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including his PhD (1965) in Mathematics under the direction of Eric Reissner. Frederic stayed at MIT as an instructor, moving on to Assistant Professor (1967) and Associate Professor (1969) of Applied Mathematics.
About Julia Wan
Julia Y.S. Chang was born in Hong Kong in 1937 and lived in Shantou, China until 1947 when she and her parents moved to Hong Kong. After graduation from high school in Sydney, Australia, Julia came to the U.S. to attend Wellesley College. She received a B.A. in Physics in 1960. She married Frederic Wan in 1960 and worked as a research biochemist which led to publications in Science and in the Proceedings for the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine.