Gilbert Strang is a Professor of Mathematics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an Honorary Fellow of Balliol College, of the University of Oxford, UK. His current research interests include linear algebra, wavelets and filter banks, applied mathematics, and engineering mathematics. He is the author or co-author of six textbooks and has published a monograph with George Fix titled “An Analysis of the Finite Element Method.” Professor Strang served as SIAM’s president from 1999-2000, chaired the U.S. National Committee on Mathematics from 2003–2004, and won the Neumann Medal of the US Association of Computational Mechanics in 2005. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.