astronomy

Wei-Ming Ni

Wei-Ming Ni is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Wei-Ming Ni rather than just read about it. In short: Wei-Ming Ni (Chinese: 倪維明(倪维明); born 23 December 1950) is a Taiwanese mathematician. He is a Presidential Chair Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen and a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota.

Key takeaways

Wei-Ming Ni belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Wei-Ming Ni to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Wei-Ming Ni from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Wei-Ming Ni (Chinese: 倪維明(倪维明); born 23 December 1950) is a Taiwanese mathematician. He is a Presidential Chair Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen and a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota. He was previously the director of the Center for PDE at the East China Normal University.

Education and career Ni works in the field of elliptic and parabolic partial differential equations. He graduated from National Taiwan University with a B.S. in mathematics in 1972 and earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from New York University in 1979 under Louis Nirenberg. Ni is an editor-in-chief of the Journal of Differential Equations, and was an ISI Highly Cited Researcher in 2002. As said by the journal Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems:

[Ni] first became a household name in the PDE community when he published with Gidas and Nirenberg the seminal paper in 1979, “On the symmetry of positive solutions of nonlinear elliptic equations” [...] The research and expository work of Professor Ni has influenced the research directions and activities of a large number of mathematicians, many of whom are playing important roles in the field of partial differential equations today.

Major publications Gidas, B.; Ni, Wei Ming; Nirenberg, L. Symmetry and related properties via the maximum principle. Comm. Math. Phys. 68 (1979), no. 3, 209–243. Gidas, B.; Ni, Wei Ming; Nirenberg, L. Symmetry of positive solutions of nonlinear elliptic equations in ℝn. Mathematical analysis and applications, Part A, pp. 369–402, Adv. in Math. Suppl. Stud., 7a, Academic Press, New York-London, 1981. Lin, C.-S.; Ni, W.-M.; Takagi, I. Large amplitude stationary solutions to a chemotaxis system. J. Differential Equations 72 (1988), no. 1, 1–27. Ni, Wei-Ming; Takagi, Izumi. On the shape of least-energy solutions to a semilinear Neumann problem. Comm. Pure Appl. Math. 44 (1991), no. 7, 819–851. Lou, Yuan; Ni, Wei-Ming. Diffusion, self-diffusion and cross-diffusion. J. Differential Equations 131 (1996), no. 1, 79–131. Ni, Wei-Ming. Diffusion, cross-diffusion, and their spike-layer steady states. Notices Amer. Math. Soc. 45 (1998), no. 1, 9–18.

References

External links Wei-Ming Ni publications indexed by Google Scholar

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Wei-Ming Ni

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Wei-Ming Ni claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Wei-Ming Ni before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Wei-Ming Ni ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Wei-Ming Ni

In research: Wei-Ming Ni appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Wei-Ming Ni in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Wei-Ming Ni is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1950 births, 20th-century Taiwanese mathematicians, 21st-century Taiwanese mathematicians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Wei-Ming Ni outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Wei-Ming Ni in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Wei-Ming Ni means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Wei-Ming Ni out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Wei-Ming Ni in simple terms?

Why does Wei-Ming Ni matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Wei-Ming Ni?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Wei-Ming Ni.