Seminário Análise Funcional e Aplicações 

19/09/2008, 14:00 — 16:00 — Sala P3.10, Pavilhão de Matemática
Bernd Silbermann, Technische Universität Chemnitz, Germany

100 years Galerkin's method

There are some reasons to assume that Galerkin's method (or what is called now Galerkin's method) was born about 100 years ago. It is not quite clear to whom one has to adress the priority, but without doubt, Bubnov, Galerkin, Ritz and Simic belong to the circle of main actors. Interestingly enough, the first idea of Galerkin's method was created in order to solve approximately some biharmonic problems occuring in the theory of thin plates. I shall try to describe in short a part of these developments which then had a considerable influence on forming Numerical Mathematics both for biharmonic problems and yet for more general settings. Subsequently I will mention some theoretical concepts of projection and more general approximation methods for solving operator equations and then pass back to biharmonic problems. Especially I will discuss a method of approximate solution of such problems based on function theory considerations.