For nearly five decades, Alfred Samuel Carasso has established himself as a prominent leader and expert in the field of mathematics through his significant contributions to the deconvolution problem, and such related areas of mathematical analysis as ill-posed continuation, backward parabolic equations, holomorphic semigroup theory, and first-kind integral equations. He invented stabilized explicit time-marching finite difference schemes for solving multidimensional, ill-posed, time-reversed evolution equations, including hyperbolic-parabolic systems. A major application of Carasso’s work on marching backward in time, lies in his patented image deblurring procedures, which can significantly improve Hubble Space Telescope imagery, as well as scanning electron microscope nanoscale images, and MRI and PET brain scans.
Alfred Carasso’s interest in reconstructuring the past was inspired by his beloved wife Beatrice, whose keen appreciation of French literature led to frequent discussions about the role of “involuntary memory” in Marcel Proust’s landmark novel, “Remembrance of Things Past.”
Today, Carasso serves as a mathematician at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Md., a role he has held since 1982. Prior to joining NIST, he held professorships at The University of New Mexico (1969-1981) and Michigan State University (1968-1969). Other noteworthy positions he held are consultant at the Institute for Defense Analyses’ Center for Computing Sciences in Bowie, Md., and visiting staff member at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Carasso commenced his career as a meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology in Adelaide, Australia.
Alfred Carasso holds a Bachelor of Science in physics from the University of Adelaide in South Australia, which he acquired in 1960. In 1964, he obtained a master’s degree in meteorology from UW-Madison. He then obtained a Ph.D. in mathematics at Wisconsin in 1968.
A lifelong learner committed to his personal and professional development, Carasso has been actively involved in the mathematics community for an extended period. He maintains memberships with the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and the American Mathematical Society. He is also a member of the Cosmos Club in Washington, DC.
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