I was a farmer, and remains a farmer forever in heart.
I went to school at the age of 5. I was out of school for one year when I was 11, working in the fields to take care of two oxen in my village. I finished my high school at the age of 15, beginning my life as a farmer for three years. I wished to become a poet, but unfortunately I do not have such a talent.
When I was 18, I managed to enter Xiangtan University by passing the national examination. After 4 years' study, I managed to pass an exam, and came Beijing as a graduate student at the Computing Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences . I stayed in Beijing for about 9 months before I went to England studying at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics of University of Cambridge in November 1982. I finished my Ph.D. thesis by the end of 1985, and worked in Cambridge for three years as a Rutherford research fellow at Fitzwilliam College of Cambridge before returning to China in September 1988.
I work on nonlinear optimization, mainly on trust region algorithms, quasi-Newton methods, etc.. I think that I work reasonably hard.
I enjoy reading. Buying books is one of my hobbies.
I like playing contract bridge , still play now and then.
I used to run middle to long distance, but now too old and too busy.
I enjoy talking with friends.
I hate administration, but unfortunately, I was the director of the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Scientific/Engineering Computing of the Chinese Academy of Sciences for about 12 years(from 1995 to 2006), the director of the State Key Laboratory of Scientific and Engineering Computing of China for 10 years (from 1996 to 2005), and and one of the vice presidents of Academy of Mathematics and System Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences for 8 years (from 1998 to 2006). Now I am very happy to be free, back to pure research, enjoying life and mathematics, playing with students and friends, and travelling around the world!
My address is as follows: Institute of Computational Mathematics and Scientific/Engineering Computing, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 2719, Beijing 100080, China tel +86-10-6255-9001 Fax +86-10-6254-2285 e-mail: yyx@lsec.cc.ac.cn