Steven M. Wise

Professor of Mathematics at the University of Tennessee


About | Steven M. Wise

About

Short Biography

I have been a professor of mathematics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, since 2007. Before that I was a postdoc at UC, Irvine, in Orange County California, where I worked with John Lowengrub and Vittorio Cristini on complex fluids, crystal microstructure, and cancer progression. I got a BS degree in mathematics in 1996 from Clarion University and did graduate work in mathematics at Virginia Tech and Penn State after that. I received my PhD in 2003 from the University of Virginia, where I studied engineering physics, working with the nicest person in the world, Dr. William C. Johnson.

I teach courses in PDE, analysis, applied mathematics, and numerical analysis. With Abner Salgado, I wrote a graduate-level textbook entitled Classical Numerical Analysis: A Comprehensive Course, published by Cambridge University Press in 2023. You can check it out on Amazon or on Cambridge Core. We have another book coming soon on the topic of multigrid methods, focusing on basic theory and implementation in Matlab.

I have a YouTube channel, WiseAppliedMaths, where I post lectures from some of the courses that I teach. My latest playlist is a course on Asymptotic Analysis.

Research

I work in the intersection of numerical analysis, partial differential equations, and soft matter physics. I build models to study heat, mass, and current flow and the formation of interfaces in complex fluids and materials, and I design efficient numerical methods to get approximate solutions.

Citations

My citation information can be found in the Google Scholar, Scopus, and other links below, and my UTK Faculty Profile can be found here. I was recognized by Web of Science as a highly cited researcher in 2020 and 2022.

Favorite (Mostly Maths) Quotes

“No self-respecting architect leaves the scaffolding in place after completing his building.” – Carl Friedrich Gauss

“If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.” – John von Neumann

“In contrast to the methods of the last two sections, which we would describe as exact, rigorous, systematic, limited in scope, and deadly, these new methods are approximate, intuitive, heuristic, powerful, and fascinating.” – Carl M. Bender and Steven A. Orszag