Prof. JAC (André) Weideman from Stellenbosch University is among 28 noteworthy professional mathematicians worldwide who have been elected as a Fellow of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). 

The 2017 fellows were elected for their exemplary research and outstanding service to the community in the fields of applied mathematics and computational science. Prof. Weideman was recognized for his "powerful and elegant numerical algorithms derived from complex analysis". His work on the computation of integral transforms such as the Laplace and Hilbert transforms, and the computation of special functions such as the plasma dispersion function, has become one of the benchmarks against which new algorithms are tested.

SIAM is regarded as one of the world's leading organisations in the field of applied mathematics and being elected as a Fellow comes with enormous prestige.

Prof. Weideman obtained a PhD in applied mathematics from the University of the Orange Free State in 1986 and thereafter lectured at Oregon State University in the USA during the 1990s. In 1999 he returned to South Africa to take up a professorship in applied mathematics at Stellenbosch University. During his career of over thirty years he has published more than 40 research papers in the best journals in applied and numerical analysis, such as SIAM Review, Physica D, Foundations of Computational Mathematics, Journal of Computational Physics, Mathematics of Computation, Numerische Mathematik and Journal of Approximation Theory.

Most noteworthy is the fact that seven of his papers have attracted more than 100 citations, while a 2002 paper, titled "A MATLAB differentiation matrix suite" and co-authored by SC Reddy, attracted over 600 citations. This software enables researchers to solve a variety of problems in areas such as fluid mechanics and quantum mechanics.

In 2015 Prof. Weideman was invited as plenary speaker to the New Directions in Numerical Computation Conference at Oxford University and in 2016 as plenary speaker to the fourth Dolomites Workshop on Constructive Approximation and Applications held at the University of Verona in Italy. In both instances he shared the podium with several eminent mathematicians.  

Prof. Ingrid Rewitzky, Head of SU's Department of Mathematical Sciences, congratulated Prof. Weideman on this well-deserved recognition of outstanding research contributions.
The SIAM Fellows will be recognised for their achievements during the SIAM annual meeting that will take place in Pittsburgh in the USA from 10 to 14 July 2017.

On the photo above, Prof JAC (André) Weideman. Photo credit: Nick Hale