“The Roy Bergh Leipnik Environmental Fund in the Division of Mathematical, Life, and Physical Sciences” has been established to support talented and deserving graduate student(s) engaged in studies related to the environment. The amount of the award will be based on the individual recipient’s(s’) unique need and will be given directly to the student(s), in addition to the financial support provided by the student’s(s’) department(s) and/or research advisor(s). The Geography Awards Committee will set up an annual process to promote the Roy Bergh Leipnik Environmental Fund, request and review applications, select the recipient(s), and determine the amount of the award(s). It is anticipated, but not required, that the number of student recipients will range from a minimum of one or more, and the first award(s) will be made in spring of 2009.
Leipnik, the son of an itinerant barber, received his BA and MA at the University of Chicago and his PhD at the University of California at Berkeley. While still a grad student at Berkeley, he spent two years at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, then the base of such major figures as Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer. Upon completing his PhD, Leipnik was recruited by the University of Washington for his first professorship. He went on to become a Fulbright Professor at the University of Adelaide, Australia, a Senior Scientist at the Navy Research facility at China Lake, a Visiting Professor at the University of Florida, Gainsville, and, in 1975, a Professor of Mathematics at UCSB where he taught for 30 years.
Leipnik applied mathematical concepts to fields as diverse as economics, physics, hydrology and control theory. His crowning academic achievement was the solution of the Navier-Stokes equations, one of the Clay Mathematics Institute’s seven Millennium problems challenging world mathematicians (published in summary form by the Royal Society of Canada in Mathematical Reports of the Academy of Science, October 1996, Vol. XVIII, No.5; the explicit solution was published in 2005, with the deceased George Duff, in the International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, Vol. 24, No.2). Dubbed a “generous genious by his colleagues, Leipnik died in October 2006 at age 82. The Roy Bergh Leipnik Environmental Fund has been established by his wife, Joan Leipnik, and sons, Erik and Mark (UCSB graduates), as a vehicle for honoring and recognizing Roy’s contributions to UCSB students, the UCSB campus, and the environmental community.
