Dr. Daniel Lynch
Mathematician wins award from WHOI
By James Hrynyshyn, Special Writer
Cape Cod Times
WOODS HOLE - An environmental award to be presented Monday by the Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institution recognizes a man on the front lines
of physical, biomedical and earth sciences.
Dan Lynch, a mathematician is this year's recipient of the B.H. Ketchum
Award, presented annually by the WHOI Coastal Research Center to a
scientist tackling coastal pollution problems. Lynch, a professor
of engineering at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., has done extensive
work on mathematical models of freezing soils, ground-water pollution
and ocean currents from the Canadian Pacific coast to the Straits
of Gibraltar.
But he has also worked on blood circulation and electric fields in
humans, topics that share oceanography's increasing reliance on computational
science, or math.
Until recently, Lynch said Thursday, math was unable to address many
problems raised by such complex research subjects. As a result, mathematicians
rarely rose to the forefront of exciting scientific fields.
The advent of faster and more powerful computers has changed all that,
said Lynch. Now, "when you make a breakthrough in (one) such field
. . . you find a whole variety of separate disciplines are connected,"
he said.
Lynch said mathematics is rapidIy emerging as a new force in scientific
research. "It's not so pedestrian as it was when you used to learn
it," he said.
In the past, science was divided into theory and experiment. Many
scientists are now treating mathematical computation as a third element
that can bridge the other two.
Computer models in oceanography, for example, can give researchers
vital clues on where and when to take their field measurements.
Lynch, a professional mathematician for 12 years, has created computer
models for WHOI scientists for much of the last decade. He said he
is now trying to devote his career to problems that "push ahead our
understanding of largescale environmental problems."
His latest WHOI project involves circulation patterns in the Gulf
of Maine.
At Monday's award ceremony, at 4 p.m. in Redfield Auditorium, Woods
Hole, Lynch will discuss computer models and their role in oceanography.
The Ketchum Award was established in 1983 in tribute to the late Bostwick
Ketchum, a WHOI oceangrapher for 40 years. Lynch is the first mathematician
to receive the award.