Antonmaria Alessio Minzoni
Antonmaria “Tim” Alessio Minzoni passed away on the 1 July 2017. He was one of the leading applied mathematicians in Mexico and had a profound influence on the development of this subject, mathematical physics, and their applications to other branches of science. Tim was born on 16 July 1950 in Milan, Italy, but grew up in Mexico, where his family had emigrated when he was 2 years old. He received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in 1972 and a PhD in applied mathematics from the California Institute of Technology in 1976 under the supervision of the renowned applied mathematician G.B. Whitham. His PhD thesis was “Some problems of edge waves and standing waves on beaches.”
Starting in 1976 and throughout his academic career, Tim was a professor at the Intituto de Investigaciones en Matemáticas Aplicádas y en Sistemas (IIMAS) of UNAM in Mexico City, where he reached the highest academic rank in 1995. Some of his pleasures in life were traveling, getting to know new countries, and establishing new research contacts and lines. During the first 20 years of his career, he held a number of visiting academic positions at universities in Australia, India, the UK, and the US.
Tim’s primary research area was nonlinear wave propagation. However, he was fascinated by and contributed to an unusually wide breadth of research in physics and biophysics, based on long-term and enthusiastic collaborations with leading experts in each area. His thesis and early work, until the mid 1980s, focused on nonlinear effects in guided modes in water waves and other geophysical fluid systems. In the 1990s his attention turned to solitons and coherent structures, and in the last 15 years this work linked with the study of optical solitons in nonlocal systems, particularly nematic liquid crystals. In collaboration with G. Assanto of the University of Rome “Roma Tre” and N. F. Smyth of the University of Edinburgh, Tim developed an analytical theory of optical soliton propagation in liquid crystals which proved to be valid in experimental regimes. A key to this understanding was the use of asymptotic analysis to incorporate the radiation shed as the solitons evolve.
Tim’s contacts with the theoretical physicists M. Rosenbaum and A. Corichi of UNAM resulted in important work on differential geometric and general relativistic wave equations, contributing to the semiclassical theory of black holes.
Tim had a career-long interest in medicine and biophysics and pursued several collaborations with physicians and biologists. His early work was on neurophysiology, where he collaborated for several years with the physiologist F. Alonso de Florida of UNAM on modeling the Kindling effect in epileptic seizures. More research with health specialists included neurotransmitter signaling, chemotherapy dosage, and the long-time dynamics of heart valves. Tim also studied nonlinear wave propagation in lattices, a problem motivated by energy transport phenomena in biological molecular chains. Owing to the relevance of this work in health sciences, Tim Minzoni was appointed by UNAM and the Mexico City government to coordinate the analysis of the A(H1N1) virus outbreak in Mexico in 2007.
Tim’s overall scientific achievements signal him as one of the outstanding applied mathematicians coming out of the Caltech applied mathematics program during the 1970s. His career also reflects the academic environment of UNAM and Mexico DF, as Tim was active in all aspects of university life and significantly influenced the development of applied mathematics at UNAM. He stood out in the mathematical community for his constant efforts to model problems stemming from local laboratories and hospitals.
Tim supervised seven doctoral students and three postdocs at UNAM and contributed to strengthening IIMAS by teaching, mentoring and recruiting several generations of applied mathematicians.
Tim’s publication record includes 80 Web of Science articles and a highly regarded series of calculus textbooks. His achievements were recognized by including him in numerous prize, grant and academic evaluation committees at UNAM, at universities abroad and at Mexico’s research agency CONACyT. He was a member of the Academia Mexicana de Ciencias, and he served as vice president of the Sociedad Matemática Mexicana (1990-91). He was also an editor of Miscelánea Matemática.
Antonmaria Minzoni was respected, admired, and loved by those who got to know him. His friends and colleagues will miss his insightful advice and wide knowledge, his life experience and wisdom, and his generosity. He is survived by his wife, Delia, daughters Sofia and Angela, and sister Angela.
