Gunther Uhlmann

Professor Gunther Uhlmann is the Walker Family Endowed Professor in Mathematics at the University of Washington. He is a major innovator in the area of inverse problems, in particular the recovery of geometric and analytic information from boundary data. His solution of the Calderon conjecture is not only a milestone in this theory, but has turned out to have important ramifications for real world problems as well. Such problems are of immense interest to mathematicians, scientists and engineers and have important applications in daily life, including shedding light on the elusive phenomenon of invisibility. In 2003, Prof Uhlmann has proved that by measuring the scattered waves at a boundary, a person may not be able to tell what that object is as he can construct two different objects that give exactly the same scattering. His theorem actually implies that Harry Potter’s cloak can become real. In 2006, physicists proved (independently) that the mathematical transform introduced by Prof Uhlmann can be used to design Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak.