Charles V. Coffman

Professor Emeritus
Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University

E-mail: cc0b@home.com

Research

The general areas of my research are ordinary- and partial-differential equations and functional analysis with emphasis on variational methods for linear and non-linear boundary-value problems. A particular interest of mine has been in the existence and uniqueness questions for a class of non-linear elliptic boundary-value problems that arise in mathematical physics. Another interest has been in boundary-value and eigenvalue problems for the biharmonic operator. Results obtained here pertain to the bending and vibration of a clamped plate and to stationary Stoke's flow in the plane.

Selected Publications

Coffman, C.V. and Ziemer, W.K., "A Prescribed Mean Curvature Problem on Domains Without Radial Symmetry," SIAM Journal of Mathematical Analysis 22: 982–990.

Coffman, C.V. (1986), "On the Construction of Series Solutions to the First Biharmonic Boundary Value Problem on a Rectangle," SIAM Journal of Mathematical Analysis 17:384–402.

Coffman, C.V. and Marcus, M.M. (1983), "Existence Theorems for Superlinear Elliptic Dirichlet Problems in Exterior Domains," Nonlinear Functional Analysis and its Applications, Proceedings of Symposia in Pure Mathematics, Vol. 45.