Leslie F. Greengard
Leslie F. Greengard is a mathematician and computer scientist. He currently serves as Executive Principal Investigator of RiskEcon® Lab @ Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and was previously the Director of Courant, which is an independent division of New York University (NYU). He is currently Silver Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Courant, where he has been a faculty member since 1989, and Professor at Tandon School of Engineering at NYU.
Leslie is also Director of the Center for Computational Mathematics at the Flatiron Institute, having joined in 2013 as founding Director of the Simons Center for Data Analysis. Leslie holds an M.D. and Ph.D. in computer science from Yale University.
Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, Leslie has contributed to the fields of scientific computing, data analysis and integral equations. One of his most significant scientific achievements, together with Vladimir Rokhlin, was the development of the Fast Multipole Method (FMM), a mathematical technique with an enormous range of applications, from chip simulation to molecular modeling. In 2000, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers recognized the FMM as one of the top ten algorithms of the twentieth century and in 2001, Leslie and Vladimir received the Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research from the American Mathematical Society for their work.
In addition to his research contributions, Leslie co-founded MadMax Optics, which developed advanced numerical algorithms to solve complex engineering problems in opto-electronics, and served as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer from 2001 to 2004.