The G. S. Watson Annual Lecture, 1999
Professor Ruth Williams
Title: "From Queueing Networks to Reflecting Diffusions"
Presenter: Professor Ruth Williams, Department of Mathematics, University of California, San Diego
Date: Monday, 19 July 1999, 4pm to 5pm, Education Lecture Theatre, La Trobe University, Bendigo
Abstract: The first G. S. Watson Annual Lecture will deal with the mathematics of queues. The experience of waiting in a queue at traffic lights, in a doctor's waiting room, or on the telephone when calling a government department is well known in this modern age. It is not so well known that there is a mathematical theory of queues. Queueing models help us to understand congestion and delay in complex processing networks, which may arise in telecommunications or manufacturing. In recent years there have been some surprises, especially with regard to the stability and heavy traffic behaviour of queueing networks. In this lecture, Professor Williams will describe related mathematical developments, including those for fluid and diffusion approximations to queueing networks.
About the Presenter: Professor Williams, like the late Geoffrey Watson, also comes from Bendigo. After completing her studies at the University of Melbourne and Stanford University, she was a postdoctoral member at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in New York in 1983-84, before joining the Mathematics Department at the University of California at San Diego in 1984. Ruth Williams is currently Professor of Mathematics in that department. She has been a U.S. National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator (1987-93), Alfred P. Sloan Fellow (1988-92), and an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1998. Ruth Williams is a very distinguished mathematician.