C. Levermore

C. David Levermore is a professor of mathematics at the University of Maryland whose landmark analysis of the small-dispersion limit of the Korteweg—de Vries equation — conducted in collaboration with Peter Lax — helped establish the mathematical theory of dispersive shock waves. Levermore earned his undergraduate degree at Clarkson College and his doctorate in analysis and nonlinear wave propagation from New York University’s Courant Institute in 1982, where his dissertation examined the small-dispersion limit of the KdV equation. His three-part paper series with Lax, published in Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics in 1983, became a foundational reference for the zero-dispersion theory and has been cited hundreds of times. At the University of Maryland, where he is a professor of mathematics affiliated with the Institute for Physical Science and Technology, he has extended his work to kinetic theory, Boltzmann equations, hydrodynamic limits, shallow water systems, and the derivation of fluid dynamical systems from kinetic theories. He has served as a vice president for science policy of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).