Rate My Professor Gunther Uhlmann

Gunther Uhlmann is the Robert R. Phelps and Elaine F. Phelps Endowed Professor of Mathematics at the University of Washington. Born in Quillota, Chile, in 1952, he earned a Licenciatura degree in Mathematics from the Universidad de Chile in 1973 and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976 under Victor Guillemin. He held postdoctoral positions at Harvard University, MIT, and the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences before becoming Assistant Professor at MIT in 1980. In 1984, he joined the University of Washington as Associate Professor and has advanced to his current endowed professorship there.

Uhlmann's research specializations include inverse problems and imaging, partial differential equations, microlocal analysis, and mathematical physics, with applications to medical imaging and geophysical imaging of the Earth's structure. He achieved a major breakthrough by proving the Calderón conjecture, enabling the recovery of interior properties from boundary measurements, with impacts on electrical impedance tomography, material science, and even theoretical designs for invisibility cloaks based on transformation optics. Key publications encompass 'A global uniqueness theorem for an inverse boundary value problem' with J. Sylvester (Annals of Mathematics, 1987), 'Determining anisotropic real-analytic conductivities by boundary measurements' with J.M. Lee (Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, 1989), 'Electrical impedance tomography and Calderón's problem' (Inverse Problems, 2009), 'On nonuniqueness for Calderón’s inverse problem' with A. Greenleaf and M. Lassas (Mathematical Research Letters, 2003), and 'The Calderón problem for nonlocal operators' with T. Ghosh (2021). His profound influence in the field is evidenced by numerous honors: Sloan Fellowship (1984), Guggenheim Fellowship (2001), Highly Cited Researcher (2004), Invited Speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians (1998), Plenary Speaker at ICIAM (2007), American Academy of Arts and Sciences election (2009), SIAM Fellow (2010), Bôcher Memorial Prize (2011), and Kleinman Prize (2011).