Fokas, Athanasios

Athanasios Fokas was born in 1952 in the city of Argostolion of the Greek island of Kefalonia, in the family of Spiridon Fokas and Anastasia Laggusi. His elder brother, Gerasim (1951–2015), just before his death, became the Metropolitan of Cephallia for several months. Focas received a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering from Imperial College London in 1975 and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Caltech in 1979. His thesis, “Invariants, Lee- Backlund Operators and Backlund Transformations ” ( Invariants, Lie-Backlund Operators and Backlund Transformations ), was written under the guidance of mathematics and aeronautical engineer Paco Lagerstrom (1914-1989). In 1983, Focas received the JW Graham Research Prize, New York State . Focas subsequently studied at the University of Miami Medical School, where he received a Doctor of Medicine (MD) in 1986 ^[2] . After completing his studies at the Faculty of Medicine, Focas was appointed professor and headed the department of mathematics and computer science at Clarkson University in 1986. From there, Focas moved to England, where in 1996 he headed the Department of Applied Mathematics at Imperial College London . In 2002, he became a professor of mathematics and headed the department of nonlinear mathematics at the University of Cambridge ^[3] In 2005, he was elected a member of the Athens Academy ^[4] and a professor and honorary member of Claire Hall ( University of Cambridge ). In the same year, he was awarded the Greek Order of Phoenix (degree of commander) and the following year, 2006, received the distinction of the Greek industrialist Bodosakis Memorial Foundation ^[3] Fokas received the Naylor Prize of the London Mathematical Society in 2000 ^[5] In 2009 Fokas received the Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Foundation Prize ^[6] . Focas was president of the National Library of Greece ^[7]. Each year, Clarkson University holds lectures under the heading Fokas Lecture Series (Lecture Series).

The scientist is married to Regina Fokas and has three children: Alexander, Anastasia and John.

In a broad sense, Fokas' work is concentrated in applied mathematics and mathematical physics. He investigated a large category of differential equations in partial derivatives , linear and nonlinear, and, in particular, boundary value problems . Many of his works naturally moved into applied areas, such as Hydromechanics , Medical Imaging , and Protein Folding . His main work has been published in over 150 peer-reviewed journal articles and the Institute for Scientific Information has included Focas in the list of the most cited world scientists among mathematicians.

• MJ Ablowitz and AS Fokas, Complex Variables: Introduction and Applications , Cambridge University Press, second edition (2003)
• AS Fokas, AR Its, AA Kapaev and V Yu Novokshenov, Painlevé Transcendents: A Riemann-Hilbert Approach , AMS (2006)
• AS Fokas, A Unified Approach to Boundary Value Problems , CBMS-SIAM (2008)
• AS Fokas and HR Systems, Complex Systems 7 (1993)

• Home Page at Cambridge University
• ISI Highly Cited Researchers - AS Fokas