Jan A. Snyman

Jan A. Snyman received the B.S. (with honors) degrees in physics and mathematics from the Universities of Cape Town and Pretoria, respectively, in 1961 and 1964, the M.S. degree in physics from the University of South Africa in 1964, and the Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of Pretoria in 1975. He started his career as a Research Scientist with the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria in 1962. In 1969, he was appointed lecturer in physics at the Pretoria Technikon and in 1971, he joined the faculty of the University of Pretoria as lecturer in the Department of Applied Mathematics where he was promoted to a Full Professor in 1983. In 1990, he joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering where he teaches dynamics, numerical methods and mathematical optimization at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Snyman has supervised the theses of 26 Masters and 7 Ph.D. students. Professor Snyman’s research interests include the development and testing of constrained optimization algorithms suitable for solving design problems in mechanics. He is the author of more than 80 peer-reviewed journal publications and has also published 70 papers in conference proceedings. He has recently authored the book called Practical Mathematical Optimization — An Introduction to Basic Optimization Theory and Classical and New Gradient-Based Algorithms, Springer, Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 2005.

Biography Updated on 8 August 2007

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