Felipe Cucker

Cucker was born in Montevideo in 1958.[1][2][3] Due to the situation in Uruguay in the 70s, he emigrated to Spain to study the bachelor of mathematics at the University of Barcelona,[2][3] which he completed in 1983. He obtained his Ph.D. degree at the University of Cantabria and University of Rennes 1 in 1986 under the supervision Tomás Recio and Michel Coste. His thesis was about Nash functions on real algebraic varieties.[1][4]

From 1987 to 1992 Cucker was professor at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.[1][3]

In 1992 Cucker became professor at the recently created Pompeu Fabra University.[3] In 1995 he was promoted to chair professor at this university.[3]

In 1993 he organized the workshop Continuous Algorithms and Complexity at the Centre de Recerca Matemàtica in Barcelona[5][6] where he started his long-term collaboration with Lenore Blum, Michael Shub, and Steve Smale.[3] In 1996 he moved with them to the City University of Hong Kong to write the book Complexity and Real Computation.[2][3] Although this was intended as a temporal position,[3] Cucker would stay in Hong Kong and became an associate professor of this university in 1998, full professor in 2003, and chair professor in 2006.[1]

Cucker was one of the founders of the nonprofit association Foundations of Computational Mathematics, of which he has been a member of the Board of Directors since its creation in 1995 until 2017. Additionally, Cucker was Chair of this society from 2008 to 2011 and Editor-in-Chief of its journal from 2011 to 2017.[1][7][8]

In 2006 Cucker was named foreign member of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona.[1][9] In 2018 he was named member of the European Academy of the Sciences (EurASc).[10][11]

From 2017 to 2019 Cucker was Einstein Visiting Fellow of the Berlin Mathematical School and the Technical University Berlin.[3][12]

In 2019, the conference Complexity of numerical computation: A conference in honor of Felipe Cucker was organised at the Technical University of Berlin in Berlin celebrating his work.[13]

Since 2018 he is Head of the Mathematics Department at City University of Hong Kong.[3][14]

During the 90s, he worked in the complexity classes that appear when dealing with the Blum–Shub–Smale machine. In 1998, he co-authored one of the fundamental books in this topic, Complexity and Real Computation, together with Lenore Blum, Michael Shub, and Steve Smale.[1]

In the 2000s he focused on the analysis of numerical algorithms in linear programming. Together with Dennis Cheung he introduced the notions of the GCC condition number in linear programming.[15]

In 2007 together with Steve Smale he proposed the so-called Cucker-Smale flocking model. This model, which has received extensive attention in mathematics and other fields,[16] plays an important role in the mathematical study of flocking dynamics.[1][17]

In 2011 together with Peter Bürgisser he contributed to the solution of Smale's 17th problem.[1]

In 2013 Cucker won an Honorable Mention in the Category of Mathematics of the PROSE Awards for his book Manifold Mirrors: The Crossing Paths of the Arts and Mathematics, which dealt with mathematics and art.[18]

• Blum, Lenore; Cucker, Felipe; Shub, Michael; Smale, Steve (1998). Complexity and Real Computation. New York: Springer-Verlag. doi:10.1007/978-1-4612-0701-6. ISBN 0-387-98281-7. MR 1479636. S2CID 12510680.
• Cheung, Dennis; Cucker, Felipe (2001). "A new condition number for linear programming". Math. Program. 91 (1, Ser. A): 163–174. doi:10.1007/s101070100237. ISSN 0025-5610. MR 1865268. S2CID 8810450.
• Cucker, Felipe; Smale, Steve (2002). "On the mathematical foundations of learning". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.). 39 (1): 1–49. doi:10.1090/S0273-0979-01-00923-5. ISSN 0273-0979. MR 1864085.
• Cheung, Dennis; Cucker, Felipe (2004). "Solving linear programs with finite precision. I. Condition numbers and random programs". Math. Program. 99 (1, Ser. A): 175–196. doi:10.1007/s10107-003-0393-7. ISSN 0025-5610. MR 2032022. S2CID 43328765.
• Cucker, Felipe; Smale, Steve (2007). "Emergent behavior in flocks". IEEE Trans. Automat. Control. 52 (5): 852–862. doi:10.1109/TAC.2007.895842. ISSN 0018-9286. MR 2324245. S2CID 206590734.
• Bürgisser, Peter; Cucker, Felipe (2011). "On a problem posed by Steve Smale". Ann. of Math. (2). 174 (3): 1785–1836. doi:10.4007/annals.2011.174.3.8. ISSN 0003-486X. MR 2846491. S2CID 706015.
• Bürgisser, Peter; Cucker, Felipe (2013). Condition. The Geometry of Numerical Algorithms. Grundlehren der Mathematischen Wissenschaften. 349. Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-38896-5. ISBN 978-3-642-38895-8. MR 3098452.
• Cucker, Felipe (2013). Manifold Mirrors: The Crossing Paths of the Arts and Mathematics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-72876-8. MR 3088936.

• Personal website at the City University of Hong Kong.
• "JUAN FELIPE CUCKER FARKAS". Árbol de las Matemáticas (in Spanish). Royal Spanish Mathematical Society. 2016-11-01.
• Felipe Cucker (Hong Kong) - CATALANS AL MÓN [Felipe Cucker (Hong Kong) - CATALANS THROUGH THE WORLD] (TV broadcast) (in Catalan). Catalonia: TV3. 2005-03-07.