Michael J. D. Powell (1936–2015)

I would like to share a couple of photos of Mike Powell, FRS, who passed away last month. The photos are from early and late in his career.

The first is one of a set of contact prints from a role of Kodak black and white film that I came across in a collection of photos belonging to Gene Golub, which I was able to look through after Gene’s death in 2007. It is clear from the complete set of images that they were taken in or around the Courant Institute. The photos are undated, but Olof Widlund (who appears in some of them) tells me that the photos are most likely from 1965-1966.

The second image is from June 2013 and was taken at the banquet at the Biennial Conference in Numerical Analysis at the University of Strathclyde. Mike is flanked on his right by Iain Duff and on his left by Juan Meza. Mike was a regular attendee at this conference and starting at next month’s conference there will be a regular Fletcher-Powell Invited Lecture, honouring Roger Fletcher and Mike Powell’s contributions to numerical analysis and, particularly, nonlinear optimization.

A memorial web site for Mike has been set up.