Suzanne Lenhart


Suzanne Marie Lenhart is an American mathematician who works in partial differential equations, optimal control and mathematical biology. She is a Chancellor's Professor of mathematics at the University of Tennessee, an associate director for education and outreach at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis, and a part-time researcher at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Education and career

Lenhart grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and was educated in the Catholic school system there. She did her undergraduate studies at Bellarmine College in Louisville, where Ralph Grimaldi encouraged her to prepare for graduate studies in mathematics and gave her additional tutoring in number theory. She entered graduate school at the University of Kentucky not knowing what she would specialize in, but in her second year chose partial differential equations. She completed her doctorate in 1981 under the supervision of Lawrence C. Evans, and immediately took a tenure-track faculty position at the University of Tennessee. She added a second part-time position at Oak Ridge in 1987.

Awards and honors

Lenhart was AWM/MAA Falconer Lecturer in 1997, president of the Association for Women in Mathematics in 2001–2003, and AWM/SIAM Sonia Kovalevsky Lecturer in 2010 "in recognition of her significant research in partial differential equations, ordinary differential equations, and optimal control". She was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2010, and became a Chancellor's Professor and SIAM Fellow in 2011. In 2013, she was selected as a fellow of the American Mathematical Society in the inaugural class. In 2017, she was selected as a fellow of the Association for Women in Mathematics in the inaugural class.

Selected publications

;Textbooks
;Research papers