About Lu (1925-2025)

Born in Linchuan, Jiangxi Province, China in 1925, Lu Ting completed his undergraduate degree at Jiaotong University, Shanghai in 1946. He received a scholarship to come to the United States and completed a master’s degree at MIT in 1948, and another from Harvard in 1949. Lu Ting first came to New York University as a PhD student, completing his dissertation on the Aerodynamics of Blasts in 1951. In 1955 he joined the Aerodynamics Laboratory of the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in Freeport, Long Island where he worked with director, Antonio Ferri until 1964. When Ferri moved to the NYU Dept of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Lu did as well. Four years later he joined the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences where he spent the entirety of his teaching career advising sixteen doctoral candidates, with 362 mathematical descendants.

Professor Ting was a renowned mathematician and physicist, celebrated for his significant contributions to vortex dynamics, mathematical modeling, and asymptotic analysis. His research into vortex-dominated flows and fluid mechanics has had important applications across various fields of physics and engineering. His work is documented in more than 120 publications. His series of ten lectures given at the Aerodynamics Institute in Aachen, Germany 1988 was the basis of Viscous Vertical Flows co-authored with Rupert Klein in the Springer Verlag Lecture Notes in Physics series. The revised and expanded version became Vortex Dominated Flows: Analysis and Computation for Multiple Scale Phenomena of Viscous Vortex. A second printing with new chapters was planned but sadly not possible.

Professor Ting’s scientific creativity and analytical insight influenced the development of numerical solutions - making problems accessible to integration by numerical methods. He was known for his willingness to contribute to the efforts of colleagues, research groups and the scientific community. Professor Ting is greatly missed. Please join us to celebrate his life and legacy.