Ingrid Daubechies
Encyclopedia
Ingrid Daubechies is a Belgian
physicist
and mathematician
. She was between 2004 and 2011 the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor in the mathematics and applied mathematics departments at Princeton University
. In January 2011 she moved to Duke University
as a Professor in mathematics. She is the first woman president of the International Mathematical Union
(2011–2014). She is best known for her work with wavelet
s in image compression
.
, Belgium, as the daughter of Marcel Daubechies (a civil mining engineer) and Simonne Duran (then a homemaker, later a criminologist). Daubechies completed her undergraduate studies in physics at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
in 1975. She obtained her Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1980, and continued her research career at that institution until 1987, rising through the ranks to positions roughly equivalent with research assistant-professor in 1981 and research associate-professor 1985.
In 1985 Daubechies met mathematician Robert Calderbank
, then on a 3-month exchange visit from AT&T Bell Laboratories, New Jersey
to the Brussels-based mathematics division of Philips
Research; they married in 1987.
Daubechies then moved to the United States
, taking a position at the Murray Hill AT&T Bell Laboratories'
New Jersey
facility. Earlier that same year, she had made her best-known discovery: the construction of compactly supported continuous wavelet
s.
Since 1993, Daubechies has been a professor at Princeton University
, where she is active especially within the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics. She was the first female full professor of Mathematics at Princeton. In January 2011 she moved to Duke University to serve as a professor of Mathematics.
The name Daubechies is widely associated with
. In 1994 she received the American Mathematical Society
Steele Prize for Exposition for her book Ten Lectures on Wavelets and was invited to give a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians
in Zurich. In 1997 she was awarded the AMS Ruth Lyttle Satter prize. She was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences
in 1998.
In 2000 Daubechies became the first woman to receive the National Academy of Sciences Award in Mathematics, presented every 4 years for excellence in published mathematical research. The award honored her "for fundamental discoveries on wavelets and wavelet expansions and for her role in making wavelets methods a practical basic tool of applied mathematics."
In January 2005, Daubechies became just the third woman since 1924 to give the Josiah Willard Gibbs Lecture sponsored by the American Mathematical Society. Her talk was on "The Interplay Between Analysis and Algorithm."
Ingrid Daubechies was the 2006 Emmy Noether Lecturer at the San Antonio Joint Mathematics Meeting.
In September 2006, the Pioneer Prize from the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
was awarded jointly to Ingrid Daubechies and Heinz Engl. The citation for Daubechies reads as follows:
The following material, reprinted here with permission, was published in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society
(March 1997, 44: 348–349), at the occasion of Daubechies receiving the 1997 Satter Prize.
Citation
Brief Biographical Sketch
Response from Ingrid Daubechies:
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
and mathematician
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
. She was between 2004 and 2011 the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor in the mathematics and applied mathematics departments at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
. In January 2011 she moved to Duke University
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
as a Professor in mathematics. She is the first woman president of the International Mathematical Union
International Mathematical Union
The International Mathematical Union is an international non-governmental organisation devoted to international cooperation in the field of mathematics across the world. It is a member of the International Council for Science and supports the International Congress of Mathematicians...
(2011–2014). She is best known for her work with wavelet
Wavelet
A wavelet is a wave-like oscillation with an amplitude that starts out at zero, increases, and then decreases back to zero. It can typically be visualized as a "brief oscillation" like one might see recorded by a seismograph or heart monitor. Generally, wavelets are purposefully crafted to have...
s in image compression
Image compression
The objective of image compression is to reduce irrelevance and redundancy of the image data in order to be able to store or transmit data in an efficient form.- Lossy and lossless compression :...
.
Biography
Daubechies was born in HouthalenHouthalen-Helchteren
Houthalen-Helchteren is a municipality located in the Belgian province of Limburg. Houthalen-Helchteren consists of: Houthalen-centrum, Houthalen-Oost, Laak, Meulenberg and Lillo. On January 1, 2006 Houthalen-Helchteren had a total population of 29,945...
, Belgium, as the daughter of Marcel Daubechies (a civil mining engineer) and Simonne Duran (then a homemaker, later a criminologist). Daubechies completed her undergraduate studies in physics at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel is a Flemish university located in Brussels, Belgium. It has two campuses referred to as Etterbeek and Jette.The university's name is sometimes abbreviated by "VUB" or translated to "Free University of Brussels"...
in 1975. She obtained her Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1980, and continued her research career at that institution until 1987, rising through the ranks to positions roughly equivalent with research assistant-professor in 1981 and research associate-professor 1985.
In 1985 Daubechies met mathematician Robert Calderbank
Robert Calderbank
A. Robert Calderbank is the dean of Natural Sciences and professor of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Mathematics at Duke University, and a professor of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Applied and Computational Mathematics at Princeton University...
, then on a 3-month exchange visit from AT&T Bell Laboratories, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
to the Brussels-based mathematics division of Philips
Philips
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....
Research; they married in 1987.
Daubechies then moved to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, taking a position at the Murray Hill AT&T Bell Laboratories'
Bell Labs
Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...
New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
facility. Earlier that same year, she had made her best-known discovery: the construction of compactly supported continuous wavelet
Wavelet
A wavelet is a wave-like oscillation with an amplitude that starts out at zero, increases, and then decreases back to zero. It can typically be visualized as a "brief oscillation" like one might see recorded by a seismograph or heart monitor. Generally, wavelets are purposefully crafted to have...
s.
Since 1993, Daubechies has been a professor at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, where she is active especially within the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics. She was the first female full professor of Mathematics at Princeton. In January 2011 she moved to Duke University to serve as a professor of Mathematics.
The name Daubechies is widely associated with
- the orthogonal Daubechies waveletDaubechies waveletNamed after Ingrid Daubechies, the Daubechies wavelets are a family of orthogonal wavelets defining a discrete wavelet transform and characterized by a maximal number of vanishing moments for some given support...
- and the biorthogonal CDF waveletCohen-Daubechies-Feauveau waveletCohen-Daubechies-Feauveau wavelet are the historically first family of biorthogonal wavelets, which was made popular by Ingrid Daubechies. These are not the same as the orthogonal Daubechies wavelets, and also not very similar in shape and properties...
. A wavelet from this family of wavelets is now used in the JPEG 2000JPEG 2000JPEG 2000 is an image compression standard and coding system. It was created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group committee in 2000 with the intention of superseding their original discrete cosine transform-based JPEG standard with a newly designed, wavelet-based method...
standard.
Awards
She received the Louis Empain Prize for Physics in 1984, awarded once every five years to a Belgian scientist on the basis of work done before the age of 29. Between 1992 and 1997 she was a fellow of the MacArthur Foundation and in 1993 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and SciencesAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
. In 1994 she received the American Mathematical Society
American Mathematical Society
The American Mathematical Society is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, which it does with various publications and conferences as well as annual monetary awards and prizes to mathematicians.The society is one of the...
Steele Prize for Exposition for her book Ten Lectures on Wavelets and was invited to give a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians
International Congress of Mathematicians
The International Congress of Mathematicians is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union ....
in Zurich. In 1997 she was awarded the AMS Ruth Lyttle Satter prize. She was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
in 1998.
In 2000 Daubechies became the first woman to receive the National Academy of Sciences Award in Mathematics, presented every 4 years for excellence in published mathematical research. The award honored her "for fundamental discoveries on wavelets and wavelet expansions and for her role in making wavelets methods a practical basic tool of applied mathematics."
In January 2005, Daubechies became just the third woman since 1924 to give the Josiah Willard Gibbs Lecture sponsored by the American Mathematical Society. Her talk was on "The Interplay Between Analysis and Algorithm."
Ingrid Daubechies was the 2006 Emmy Noether Lecturer at the San Antonio Joint Mathematics Meeting.
In September 2006, the Pioneer Prize from the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
The International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics is a worldwide organisation for professional applied mathematics societies, and for other societies with a significant interest in industrial or applied mathematics...
was awarded jointly to Ingrid Daubechies and Heinz Engl. The citation for Daubechies reads as follows:
- The ICIAM/SIAM Pioneer Prize is awarded to Ingrid Daubechies, Princeton University, Princeton, USA, for her pioneering work in applied mathematics and applications. Her work is a permanent contribution to mathematics, science and engineering and has found widespread use in image processing and time frequency analysis. Daubechies best known achievement is her construction of compactly supported wavelets in the late 1980s. Since that time she has advanced the development of biorthogonal wavelet bases. These bases are currently the most commonly used bases for data compression. Daubechies name is widely associated with the biorthogonal CDF wavelet. Wavelets from this family are currently used in JPEG 2000 for both lossless and lossy compression. Her continuing wavelet research also resulted in path-breaking work including the discovery of Wilson bases. This discovery led to the existence of cosine packet libraries of orthonormal bases and Gaussian bases. These are now standard tools in time frequency analysis and numerical solutions of partial differential equations.
The following material, reprinted here with permission, was published in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society
Notices of the American Mathematical Society
Notices of the American Mathematical Society is a membership magazine of the American Mathematical Society, published monthly except for the combined June/July issue. It is the world's most widely read mathematics magazine, sent to the approximately 30,000 AMS members worldwide...
(March 1997, 44: 348–349), at the occasion of Daubechies receiving the 1997 Satter Prize.
Citation
- The Satter Prize Committee recommends that the 1997 Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in Mathematics be awarded to Ingrid Daubechies of Princeton University for her deep and beautiful analysis of wavelets and their applications. Her work is a permanent contribution not only to mathematics but to science and engineering. Daubechies' best-known achievement is her construction of compactly supported wavelets in the late 1980s. Over the last five years she has continued their development on the theoretical level and to applications in physics and signal processing. Her continuing research has resulted in the following path-breaking developments. Her discovery with Jaffard and Journe of orthonormal Wilson bases provided the first clues to the existence of cosine packet libraries of orthonormal bases as well as Gaussian bases. These are now standard tools in time frequency analysis as well as in the numerical analysis of partial differential equations. Her work with A. Cohen on biorthogonal wavelet bases provided a more flexible approach to the use of wavelets in image compression algorithms. Biorthogonal basis functions are currently the most common wavelets used in standard compression; they are considered to be superior to orthogonal filters in, for example, fingerprint compression. While continuing to push forward wavelet analysis, Daubechies has also made important contributions in other related areas. Of particular note are her work with Klauder on path integration and her work with her student Anna Gilbert on homogenization, which has contributed to our understanding of multiscale interactions and their computations.
Brief Biographical Sketch
- Ingrid Daubechies received both her bachelor's and Ph.D. degrees (in 1975 and 1980) from the Free University in Brussels, Belgium. She held a research position at the Free University until 1987. From 1987 to 1994 she was a member of the technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories, during which time she took leaves to spend six months (in 1990) at the University of Michigan, and two years (1991-93) at Rutgers University. She is now at the mathematics department and the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics at Princeton University.
- She was awarded a Leroy P. Steele prize for exposition in 1994 for her book Ten Lectures on Wavelets. From 1992 to 1997 she was a fellow of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Mathematical Society, the Mathematical Association of America, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronical Engineers. She is married and has two children.
Response from Ingrid Daubechies:
- I would like to thank the American Mathematical Society as well as the members of the Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize Committee for awarding this prize to me this year. I am particularly grateful that the citation mentions both my theoretical work and my interest in concrete applications. They are both important to me, and it is gratifying to see them both recognized. I would also like to thank my many collaborators: working with them has enriched both my mathematics and my life.
Major awards
- Louis Empain Prize for Physics (1984)
- Steele Prize for Mathematical ExpositionLeroy P. Steele PrizesThe Leroy P. Steele Prizes are awarded every year by the American Mathematical Society, for distinguished research work and writing in the field of mathematics. Since 1993 there has been a formal division into three categories....
(1994) - Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in Mathematics (1997)
- Golden Jubilee Award for Technological Innovation from the IEEE Information Theory SocietyIEEE Information Theory SocietyThe IEEE Information Theory Society , formerly the IEEE Information Theory Group, is a professional society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers focused on several aspects of information: its processing, transmission, storage, and usage; and the "foundations of the...
(1998) - Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics EngineersInstitute of Electrical and Electronics EngineersThe Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is a non-profit professional association headquartered in New York City that is dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence...
(IEEE) (1998) - Basic Research Award, German Eduard Rhein Foundation (2000)
- NAS Award in MathematicsNAS Award in MathematicsThe NAS Award in Mathematics is awarded by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences "for excellence of research in the mathematical sciences published within the past ten years." It has been awarded every four years since 1988....
(2000) - Emmy Noether Lecturer (2006)
- 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship
- IEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing MedalIEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing MedalThe IEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal is presented "for outstanding achievements in signal processing" theory, technology or commerce. The recipients of this award will receive a gold medal, together with a replica in bronze, a certificate and a honorarium.The award was established in...
(2011) - Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research from the American Mathematical SocietyAmerican Mathematical SocietyThe American Mathematical Society is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, which it does with various publications and conferences as well as annual monetary awards and prizes to mathematicians.The society is one of the...
(2011)
External links
- An Interview with Ingrid Daubechies in the Girls' Angle Bulletin, volume 1, number 6 and volume 2, numbers 1 through 4.
- "Ingrid Daubechies", Biographies of Women Mathematicians, Agnes Scott CollegeAgnes Scott CollegeAgnes Scott College is a private undergraduate college in the United States. Agnes Scott's campus lies in downtown Decatur, Georgia, nestled inside the perimeter of the bustling metro-Atlanta area....
- Ingrid Daubechies' homepage at Princeton University