Two faculty named Distinguished University Professors - 06/01/07

COLUMBUS –A pioneer in the field of mathematical biology and an internationally renowned expert in European and military history received The Ohio State University's highest faculty honor at Friday's meeting (6/1) of the university's Board of Trustees.

The title of Distinguished University Professor was conferred by trustees on Avner Friedman, Distinguished Professor of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and Geoffrey Parker, the Andreas Dorpalen Designated Professor in European History. Each will receive an additional annual budget of $10,000 from the Office of Academic Affairs for three years to support his academic work and will become members of the President's and Provost's Advisory Council.

Friedman has gained renown as a research mathematician, scholar, educator and administrator over his academic career. His research interests include partial differential equations and both general mathematical theory as well as applications to models that arise in the physical and life sciences, in engineering and in industry. In recent years he has focused on mathematical models and analysis of tumor growth and cancer therapy. He has published more than 400 research articles and 20 books, given hundreds of invited lectures world-wide, and served on numerous editorial boards.

He received his doctorate in mathematics from Hebrew University in Israel and held faculty positions at Northwestern University, Purdue University and the University of Minnesota, where he served as director of the Minnesota Center for Industrial Mathematics, before joining Ohio State's faculty in 2001. In 2002 he was named director of Ohio State's Mathematical Biosciences Institute, which he was instrumental in creating in collaboration with the National Science Foundation.

Friedman has been the recipient of a Sloan Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Stampacchia Prize and the National Science Foundation Special Creativity Award. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Geoffrey Parker is acknowledged as one of the most productive historians of our age in the field of early-modern European and world history. His chief fields of interest lie in the history of Spain and the Low Countries in the 16th to 18th centuries, in military and naval history and in international history. He has written, edited or co-edited 33 books and has published 90 articles and 170 book reviews. He has also presented more than 200 lectures at universities and conferences here and abroad.

A native of England, he holds his B.A., M.A., Ph.D. and Litt.D. degrees from Cambridge University. Before joining the history faculty at Ohio State in 1997, he taught at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, and Yale University. He currently teaches courses on European history and military history at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

In 1984 he became a Fellow of the British Academy, the highest honor open to scholars in the humanities in Great Britain, and he is also a Corresponding Fellow of the Dutch and Spanish Royal Academies. In 1992 the King of Spain made him a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic in recognition of his work on Spanish history. In 1999 he won the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize from the Society of Military History in recognition of his work in military history.