News
Dr. Spanier's Math Books are Adding Up
BLI Researcher Jerry Spanier, Ph.D., is the co-author of three books and has authored a chapter in a fourth in the past three years. Two of these books are research monographs that represented the first treatises on their subjects in book form when initially published. These books - Monte Carlo Principles and Neutron Transport Problems by J. Spanier and E. M. Gelbard (originally published in 1969) and The Fractional Calculus: Theory and Applications of Differentiation and Integration to Arbitrary Order by K. B. Oldham and J. Spanier (originally published in 1974) were reprinted by Dover Publications in 2008 and 2006, respectively. Both books had gone out of print but continuing demand motivated Dover to provide new and inexpensive soft cover editions. A third book, An Atlas of Functions, 2nd edition, by K. B. Oldham, J. Myland and J. Spanier will be published by Springer-Verlag as both a traditional print edition and as an e-book in 2008. It is a thoroughly revised edition of a book Drs. Oldham and Spanier published in 1987 that provides comprehensive information about several hundred mathematical functions in wide use in many fields. In the fourth book, Nuclear Computational Science: A Century in Review, also to be published by Springer-Verlag at the end of 2008, Dr. Spanier contributed a chapter "Monte Carlo Methods" that reviews the history and current status of this method beginning with the second world war.
Spanier's current research involves developing dramatically accelerated Monte Carlo algorithms and confirming the efficiency gains they achieve for radiative transport problems. These new methods will be useful in modeling the interactions of light and tissue and in other application areas in medicine and biology. When fully developed, the new techniques should make possible near real-time simulations in support of laboratory and clinical diagnoses and treatment protocols at BLI.
Dr. Spanier is Professor of Mathematics Emeritus at Claremont Graduate University. Before joining BLI as a visiting researcher in 2000, he served as the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Claremont Graduate University from 1982-1990.