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Laureation address: Professor Sir John Ball MA DPhil FRSE FRS

Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science
Laureation by Professor Mark Chaplain FRSE, School of Mathematics and Statistics

Tuesday 14 June 2022


Vice-Chancellor, it is my privilege to present for the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, Professor Sir John Macleod Ball.

John Macleod Ball was born in Farnham, Surrey. After attending Mill Hill School, London, he obtained his undergraduate degree in Mathematics from St John’s College, University of Cambridge in 1969, and his D Phil in Mechanical Engineering in 1972 from the University of Sussex. He did his postdoctoral research fellowship at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland and at Brown University in the USA. Between 1974-1996 he was at Heriot-Watt University where he became Professor of Applied Analysis. From 1996-2018, he was Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy at Oxford (the Sedleian Chair is the oldest of Oxford's scientific chairs dating back to 1621), where he was the Director of the Oxford Centre for Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations. He is currently Professor in the School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences at Heriot-Watt University, and also Emeritus Professor and Emeritus Fellow of Queen’s College at the University of Oxford; and Senior Fellow, at the Hong Kong Institute for Advanced Study, City University, Hong Kong. Over the years he has held numerous visiting positions in prestigious institutions across the world including the University of California, Berkeley; Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris; University of Minnesota; The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; and The Tata Institute for Fundamental Research, Bangalore.

Sir John’s research is in the area of applied mathematics known as nonlinear partial differential equations – these are equations describing how variables (for example temperature) change in space and time and are notoriously difficult to solve. Nonlinear partial differential equations are used in applied mathematics to predict the weather, how a pandemic spreads, how the air flows over the surface of an aircraft, how a body responds to stresses and strains. Sir John’s research is profound in two senses – he has made both fundamental mathematical contributions to the theory of nonlinear partial differential equations, and also in their applications to materials science and liquid crystals. He has pioneered work giving the first global existence theorems for energy minimizing configurations in nonlinear elasticity under realistic hypotheses on the material response and the first rigorous treatment of non-interpenetration of matter and cavitation in solids. His work with Richard James (University of Minnesota) developed the now widely used mathematical theory of martensitic phase transformations and their microstructure as well as a theory of metastability based on geometric incompatibility of parent and product phases. 

In recognition of his outstanding research Professor Ball has many prestigious awards and prizes – many more than I could possibly list here, so let me single some out : he is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society; an Associé Étranger, Académie des Sciences, Paris (the French Academy of Sciences) and a Member of the European Academy of Sciences; he was awarded the Junior Whitehead Prize, the Naylor Prize, and the David Crighton Medal from the London Mathematical Society (the latter prize jointly awarded by the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications); the Theodore von Kármán Prize by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (1999); more recently the King Faisal Prize for Science, 2018; in 2006 he received The Royal Medal (instituted by Her Majesty The Queen) from the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and was knighted in the New Year’s Honours list that year “for services to science”. 

Professor Ball has also dedicated many years of service to the mathematical community, both nationally and internationally – he is currently President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; he has been President of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society; President of the London Mathematical Society; a member (in 1998) of the Fields Medal Committee of the International Mathematical Union (the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize) and Chair of the Fields Medal Committee in 2006; he was a member of the first Abel Prize Committee; and has served as President of the International Mathematical Union from 2003 to 2006.

Professor Ball’s outstanding contributions to applied mathematics research, his role as a mathematical ambassador, and his public service to the international mathematics community and wider scientific community make him a shining example to us all. 

Vice-Chancellor, in recognition of his major contributions to applied mathematics, I invite you to confer the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, on Professor Sir John Macleod Ball.