Gunther Uhlmann Elected Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences

In April 2009, Walker Family Professor Gunther Uhlmann, one of the five principal investigators of the RTG grant, was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Founded in 1780 by a group of leading citizens including John Adams and John Hancock, the Academy functions as an independent policy research center and as an honorary society that gives recognition to American leaders in the sciences, the arts and humanities, and public life.

The Academy honored Uhlmann for his work in partial differential equations and related areas. Much of his research has focused on inverse problems, as described in the story at left. In addition, he and a group of collaborators have recently made significant contributions to the mathematical theory of apparatuses that cause electromagnetic waves to detour around a body, which offer the possibility of turning “invisibility cloaks” from science-fiction dreams into real-world devices.