Research

Wolfgang Hackbusch is distinguished for many contributions in the field of Numerical Mathematics with applications in partial differential equations, integral equations, and large systems of equations. He has contributed fundamentally to the investigation of multi-grid methods, which are the first iteration methods which can solve a large class of large systems of equations in linear complexity. In particular, he is autor of the first monograph about this topic. Numerous contributions to the treatment of fully populated matrices arising from the discretisation of integral operators led to the new technique of hierarchical matrices introduced by him. This technique enables for the first time to perform efficiently all matrix operations for matrices arising from discretisations of elliptic partial differential equations and integral equations.