Walter Gander

Prof. Walter Gander

ETH, CAB F 12.1
Departement Informatik
Universitätsstrasse 6
8092 Zürich, Switzerland
Tel: +41 79 292 0867
Email:

Secretary: Angelica Herrera
Tel: +41-44-632 2126
FAX: +41-44-632 1390

here.

Activities:

Informatics Europe

ACM Europe

"Informatics education: Europe cannot afford to miss the boat"

here.

Baptist University Hong Kong,

Computer Science Department

Informatik wird Grundlagenfach im Gymnasium:

Bern, 28. Juni 2023
Informatik im Gymnasium

Recent Talks:

Hong Kong, June 4, 2024
ALGOL: The First Programming Language Developed at ETH, a Project of Prof. Heinz Rutishauser.

Lanzhou, April 19, 2022
The First Algorithms to Compute the SVD
I have also written a paper together with my friend Johann Joss about this subject. It can be downloaded here Computing the SVD

ETH Zurich, Oktober 14, 2020
Vector Geometry using Computers

ETH Zurich, Oktober 14, 2020
Infinity and Finite Arithmetic
Published as a chapter in: Adventures Between Lower Bounds and Higher Altitudes: Essays Dedicated to Juraj Hromkovic on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday, Springer, 2018

Baptist University Hong Kong, January 13, 2020
Noteworthy Numerical Algorithms

The 5th International Conference on Matrix Methods in Mathematics and applications, Moscow, Russia, August 19-23, 2019
New Algorithms for Solving Nonlinear Eigenvalue Problems
Preprint of the corresponding article is here
It has been published as conference proceedings in
ISSN 0965-5425, Computational Mathematics and Mathematical Physics, 2021, Vol. 61, No.5, pp. 761-773. @ Pleiades Publishing, Ltd. 2021
and it has also be translated to Russian @ The Author(s), 2021, published in Zhurnal Vychislitel' noi Matematiki i Matematicheskoi Fiziki, 2021, Vol 61,No. 5, pp. 787-799
Harbin Engineering University, August , 2018
Matrix Completion with Epsilon-Algorithm
Article published in: Numerical Algorithms, Springer, 2018, ISSN 1017-1398, DOI 10.1007/s11075-018-0579-y

International Workshop on Matrix Computations Gene Golub Memorial Day, Hanzhou April 20-24, 2018
The Secular Equation, My First Encounter with Prof. Gene H. Golub (1932 –2007)

Qian Weichang College of Shanghai University, April 7, 2016
How to Compute π=3.14... to 1'000 Decimals

Hochstrasser Symposium ETH 12. Januar 2016
Der lange Weg der Informatik in die Schweizer Schulen

Gene Golub Memorial Workshop Baptist University Hong Kong 7. Februar 2015
SVD -- the Swiss Army Knife of Linear Algebra

ISSEP 2014
Informatics and General Education

IV CONGRESSO ESPANOL DE INFORMATICA Sept 17--20, 2013
Informatics = Basic Subject, Challenge and Chance

European Computer Science Summit (ECSS) Barcelona, Nov 21, 2012
Informatics in Schools?-- Urgently Needed!

SATW TecDay, Kantonsschule Olten, 8. November 2012 und Zürcher Unterland Bülach 5. Dezember 2012
Alle machen Fehler -- Auch Computer

Public Lecture 50th Anniversary Faculty of Science Baptist University Hong Kong, May 12, 2011)
Computational Thinking -- A Necessary Subject in Education
2^5 Anniversary of TeX (TUG2010 San Francisco June, 2010)
Writing the first LaTeX Book

Pui Ching Middle School Hong Kong, April 18, 2010
Scientific Computing -- Primary Purpose of Computers

City University Hong Kong, April 14, 2010
Computing Zeros of Polynomials

Education:

I am interested in CSE education. I was a member of the SIAM Working Group on Computational Science and Engineering Education and helped to define the curriculum for that field. I am also one of the fathers of the curriculum for CSE at ETH.
Books:

A book on Vector Geometry (in German) was published in summer 2022. The goal of the book is to combine Vector Geometry and Physics.
The authors are collaborators of Juraj Hromkovic. I also contributed a chapter entitled "Vector Geometry Using Computers". By using computers, I developed new algorithms.
Book Web Page of the HEP-Verlag

I published 2015 a new textbook based on a course I gave 2014 in Shanghai. Learning Matlab -- a Problem Solving Approach. Here is the
Book Web Page of Springer Verlag

The textbook with Martin Gander and Felix Kwok Scientific Computing using Maple and Matlab was published 2014. Here is the
Book Web Page of Springer Verlag

I wrote in 1984 a German textbook: W. Gander, Computermathematik, Birkhäuser Basel, zweite Auflage 1992, for teaching computer science in Swiss Gymnasia.
Here is the second edition: Download this book here (it is in public domain)
There are many exercises, thus I wrote another book with all the solutions:
W. Gander, Computermathematik, Lösungen der Aufgaben mit PASCAL Programmen, Birkhäuser Basel, 1986.
Download this book here (it is in public domain)

Software: single PASCAL programs gnuzipped tar-archive of all programs

W. Gander and J. Hrebicek, ed., Solving Problems in Scientific Computing using Maple and Matlab, Springer Berlin Heidelberg New York, 1993, 2nd edition 1995, 3rd edition 1997, 4th edition 2004.
Chinese edition by China Higer Education Press Beijing and Springer 1999.
Portuguese edition by Editora Edgard Blücher Ltda., Sao Paulo, 2001.
Russian edition of fourth edition: December 2005, Publisher Vassamedia, Minsk, Bjelarus.
Maple and Matlab Scripts are available on the Book WEB Page

Some Publications:

W. Gander: On the Linear Least Squares Problem with a Quadratic Constraint . This Stanford Report, STAN-CS-78-697, November 1978 was reprinted because the electronic Version in the Stanford Library is unreadable due to many scanning errors. The Report can be downloaded here (pdf)

Walter Gander: Infinity and Finite Arithmetic. Manuscript of a book chapter in the "Festschrift" Adventures Between Lower Bounds and Higher Altitudes - Essays Dedicated to Juraj Hromkovic on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday, Springer, 2018 download (pdf)

W. Gander: Symposium zu Ehren von Prof. em. Urs Hochstrasser . D-INFK Spotlight, 2016

W. Gander, U.Hochstrasser, A. Pluess: Die Zeichen der Zeit erkannt, Zeitungsartikel im "Der Bund", 26. Mai 2015

W. Gander: Informatics -- New Basic Subject, Bulletin of the EATCS, 2015

W. Gander: The Life of a Computer Pioneer. BLOG@CACM April 13, 2015

Hanna Rutishauser und Walter Gander: Programmieren, welche Bürde!. (online) Informatik Spektrum, Dezember 2014.

W.Gander: 50 Jahre Programmieren . D-INFK Spotlight, 2014

Walter Gander: Informatics and General Education. In: Informatics in Schools, Teaching and Learning Perspectives Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 8730 Proceedings, ISSEP 2014, Istanbul, Turkey, September 22-25, 2014.

Leon, S. J., Björck, A. and Gander, W.: Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization: 100 years and more. Numer. Linear Algebra Appl. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, (published online: 4 June 2012), May 2013; 20: pp. 492--532.

W. Gander: Ein Beispiel für; Daten: das Factbook der CIA. Informatik-Spektrum, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, ISSN0170-6012 (Print) 1432-122X (Online) July 29, 2009. Informatik-Spektrum: Volume 33, Issue 3 (2010), Page 296

Walter Gander: Algorithms for the QR-Decomposition. This is an old unpublished SAM-report (1980) which has been retyped in LaTeX and augmented by an appendix containing all the algorithms as MATLAB functions. Abstract, Paper (pdf)

W. Gander: Writing the first LaTeX book. TUGboat, Volume 31 (2010), No. 2, pp. 154--157.

W. Gander: Solving Least Squares Problems. Proceedings of the 6th Summer School on Computational Biology, September 23--25, 2010 Lednice, Czech Republic.

Walter Gander: Zeros of Determinants of $\lambda$-Matrices, (2007). Abstract , Paper (pdf)

Walter Gander: Generating Numerical Algorithms with Computer Algebra, BIT Numerical Mathematics (2006) 46: 491-504 (Special edition dedicated to Germund Dahlquist). Abstract

Walter Gander: Heisenberg Effects in Computer-Arithmetic. This research focus article published 2005 on the Department web-page describes problems with modern processors using 80-bit registers. It is not reproducible any more with newer versions of Matlab.

Walter Gander: Change of basis in polynomial interpolation, Numer. Linear Algebra Appl. 2005; 12; 769--778. Abstract Report

W. Gander and W. Gautschi: Adaptive Quadrature - Revisited, BIT Vol. 40, No. 1, March 2000, pp. 84--101. CS technical report: Report (gzipped, 82K). Programs: adaptsim.m, adaptlob.m

Curriculum Vitae:

Walter Gander, born May 24, 1944, from Saanen (BE). Education: Diploma in mathematics ETH Zürich 1968. Then assistant of H. Rutishauser in his new institute of computer science. Ph.D. in mathematics 1973, supervisor P. Henrici. From 1973 to 1987: Professor for numerical analysis and computer science at the engineering college Neu-Technikum Buchs. 1977/78 Visiting Scientist at Stanford University. 1979 Habilitation and Privatdozent for numerical analysis at ETHZ. 1984, 1993 and 2006 sabbatical leaves again at Stanford University. From 1987 to 1991 associate, since 1991 full professor for computer science at ETH Zürich. From 1989 to 1997 head of the Institute of Scientific Computing. 1990 - 1992: chairmen of the faculty of computer science. 1989 -1991 head of the Swiss Supercomputer Initiative for acquiring the national supercomputer in Manno. From Fall 1997 to Fall 2001 chairman of the department and director of education of computer science.

A complete CV with list of publications is available here (pdf)

Research interests: Scientific computing, i.e. studying the solution of problems with the use of mathematics and computation. Numerical Linear Algebra and Parallel Computing.

Last update: August 28, 2022