Chia Chiao Lin | |||||||||||
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| Born | (1916-07-07)7 July 1916 Peking, China | ||||||||||
| Died | 13 January 2013(2013-01-13) (aged 96) Beijing, China | ||||||||||
| Nationality | American[1] | ||||||||||
| Alma mater | California Institute of Technology University of Toronto National Tsinghua University | ||||||||||
| Known for | Hydrodynamic stability turbulent flow | ||||||||||
| Awards | Fluid Dynamics Prize(1979) Timoshenko Medal(1975) Otto Laporte Award(1973) | ||||||||||
| Scientific career | |||||||||||
| Fields | Applied mathematics | ||||||||||
| Institutions | Caltech Brown University MIT | ||||||||||
| Thesis | Investigations on the Theory of Turbulence (1944) | ||||||||||
| Doctoral advisor | Theodore von Kármán | ||||||||||
| Doctoral students | |||||||||||
| Other notable students | Elizabeth Cuthill | ||||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 林家翹 | ||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 林家翘 | ||||||||||
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Chia-Chiao Lin (Chinese:林家翹; 7 July 1916 – 13 January 2013) was a Chinese-born Americanapplied mathematician andInstitute Professor at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology.[2]
Lin made major contributions to the theory ofhydrodynamic stability,turbulent flow,mathematics, andastrophysics.
Lin was born inBeijing with ancestral roots inFuzhou. In 1937 Lin graduated from the department of physics,Tsinghua University in Beijing.
After graduation he was ateaching assistant in the Tsinghua University physics department. In 1939 Lin won aBoxer Indemnity Scholarship and was initially supported to study in theUnited Kingdom. However, due toWorld War II, Lin and several others were sent toNorth America by ship. Unluckily, Lin's ship was stopped inKobe,Japan, and all students had to return to China.
In 1940, Lin finally reachedCanada and studied at theUniversity of Toronto from which he earned his M.Sc. In 1941. Lin continued his studies in theUnited States and received his PhD from theCalifornia Institute of Technology in 1944 underTheodore von Kármán. His PhD thesis provided an analytic method to solve a problem in the stability of parallel shearing flows, which was the subject ofWerner Heisenberg's PhD thesis.[3]
Lin also taught at Caltech between 1943 and 1945. He taught atBrown University between 1945 and 1947. Lin joined the faculty of theMassachusetts Institute of Technology in 1947. Lin was promoted to professor atMIT in 1953 and became anInstitute Professor ofMIT in 1963. He was President of theSociety for Industrial and Applied Mathematics from 1972 to 1974.[4] Lin retired from MIT in 1987.
In 2002, he moved back to China and helped found the Zhou Pei-Yuan Center for Applied Mathematics (ZCAM) at Tsinghua University. He died inBeijing in 2013, aged 96.[5]
During his career Lin has received many prizes and awards, including:
Lin was a member of theNational Academy of Sciences,[10] theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences,[11] and theAmerican Philosophical Society,[12] cited in theAmerican Men and Women of Science. and a Fellow of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science. Lin was elected Academician ofAcademia Sinica in 1958, and became a Foreign Member of theChinese Academy of Sciences in 1994.
