Germund Dahlquist

Germund Dahlquist, who lived from 16 January 1925 to 8 February 2005, was a Swedish mathematician known mainly for early contributions to the theory of numerical analysis as applied to differential equations. He began studying mathematics at Stockholm University in 1942 and cited the Danish mathematician Harald Bohr as a profound influence. After a licentiate in 1949 he worked at the Swedish Board of Computer Machinery on the early computer BESK, and with Carl-Gustaf Rossby on early numerical weather forecasts. He defended his doctoral thesis on stability and error bounds in the numerical solution of ordinary differential equations in 1958, with Fritz Carlson and Lars Hormander as advisors, and in that work introduced the logarithmic norm. In 1959 he moved to the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, founded what became the Department of Numerical Analysis and Computer Science in 1962 and in 1963 became Sweden's first professor of numerical analysis. He helped establish the journal BIT in 1961, and the SIAM Germund Dahlquist Prize is named for him.