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Biography
An astrophysicist by education, Van Leer made seminal contributions to CFD in his 5-part article series “Towards the Ultimate Conservative Difference Scheme (1972-1979),” where he extended Godunov’s finite-volume scheme to the second order (MUSCL), developed nonoscillatory interpolation using limiters, an approximate Riemann solver, and Discontinuous-Galerkin schemes for unsteady advection. Since joining the University of Michigan’s Aerospace Engineering Department (1986) he has worked on convergence acceleration by local preconditioning and multigrid relaxation for Euler and Navier-Stokes problems, unsteady adaptive grids, space-environment modeling, atmospheric flow modeling, extended hydrodynamics for rarefied flows, and Discontinuous Galerkin methods. He retired in 2012 but continues to publish.
Throughout his career, Van Leer has crossed interdisciplinary boundaries to export state-of-the-art CFD technology. Starting from astrophysics, he first made an impact on weapons research, followed by aeronautics, then space-weather modeling, atmospheric modeling, surface-water modeling and automotive engine modeling, to name the most important fields.
POSITIONS HELD AT U-M
Professor (1986 – August 31, 2012)
Education
- Leiden State University
- PhD ’70
- Doctorandus ’66
- Candidate ’63
Research Interests
- Computational Fluid Dynamics
- Fluid Dynamics
- Numerical Analysis
Professional Service
- American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (Fellow)
- Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematic
Awards
- C.J. Kok Prize, Leiden University (1978)
- Honorary Doctorate, Free University Brussels (1990)
- Group Achievement Award, NASA Langley (1990)
- Department of Aerospace Engineering Research Award, University of Michigan (1992)
- Public Service Group Achievement Award, NASA Langley (1992)
- Fellow, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (1995)
- College of Engineering Research Award, University of Michigan (1996)
- Computational Mechanics Prize, Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers (2003)
- Department of Aerospace Engineering Service Award, University of Michigan (2005)
- Senior Fellow, Michigan Society of Fellows, University of Michigan (2005–2009)
- Arthur B. Modine Endowed Professorship (2007)
- American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Fluid Dynamics Award (2010)