Charles E. Roberts (mathematician)
Charles E. Roberts | |
|---|---|
.jpg) | |
| Born | Charles Emery Roberts, Jr October 9, 1942 Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Died | March 26, 2023 (aged 80) Naperville, Illinois, U.S. |
| Known for | Jacchia-Roberts Density Model |
| Spouse | Imogene Roberts (m. 1963) |
| Academic background | |
| Education | |
| Thesis | On the behaviour of the integral curves of a third autonomous system of differential equations in a neighborhood of a critical point (1968) |
| Geneva G. Belford | |
| Academic work | |
| Institutions | Indiana State University |
Main interests | |
Charles Emery Roberts Jr. (October 9, 1942 – March 26, 2023) was an American mathematician.[1] He was a professor of mathematics at Indiana State University from 1971 to 2017. He developed the Jacchia-Roberts Atmospheric Model used widely for orbit determination and spacecraft atmospheric entry simulations in aerospace.
Early life and education
Roberts was born in 1942 in Washington, D.C. to Evelyn and Charles Roberts Sr.[2] He attended North Posey High School and graduated as valedictorian in 1960.[2] He studied mathematics at Indiana State University, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1964 before attending the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he earned a master's in 1965.[3] He studied under Geneva G. Belford[4] and produced a thesis on the integral curves of differential equations, earning a doctorate in 1968.[3]
Career
After graduating from the University of Illinois, Roberts began working with Pan-American Airlines in Cape Canaveral, Florida from 1968 to 1970. He wrote satellite tracking programs in conjunction with NASA during the Apollo missions, including Apollo 11.[1]
In 1971, he returned to Indiana State and became a professor of mathematics. Roberts wrote multiple textbooks on mathematical proofs and differential equations.[5] In 1971, he published a modified version of the reference atmosphere developed by Luigi Giuseppe Jacchia in 1970.[6] In it, he used an asymptotic function to derive an integrable form of the differential equations used to model barometric and molecular diffusion in the upper atmosphere.[7] The Jacchia-Roberts Density Model is widely used in aerospace applications to model satellite orbital decay, compute orbit determination, and re-entry trajectories.[8][9][10]
He also published papers on celestial mechanics and developed methods for using power series to generate trajectories for orbital and suborbital vehicles.[11] His mathematics research also dealt with Hammerstein operators[12] and combinatorial theory.[13] Roberts received the Theodore Dreiser Distinguished Research Award in 2010. He retired in 2017.[1]
Roberts died in 2023 in Naperville, Illinois, aged 80.[2]
Personal life
He married Imogene Roberts on August 25, 1963. They lived in Terre Haute, Indiana and were married for 59 years until her death two weeks before his own. According to his wishes, his body was donated to the Anatomical Gift Association of Chicago.[2]
Books
- Ordinary Differential Equations: A Computation Approach (Prentice Hall, 1979) ISBN 9780136397571
- Elementary Differential Equations: Applications, Models, and Computing (Chapman & Hall, 2010) ISBN 9781041151463
- Introduction to Mathematical Proofs (Chapman & Hall, 2015) ISBN 9781032920238
References
- 1 2 3 "Theodore Dreiser Distinguished Research/Creativity Awards presented | Newsroom | Indiana State University". news.indianastate.edu. Indiana State University. April 29, 2010. Retrieved January 14, 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 "Obituary information for Charles E. Roberts, Jr". www.friedrichjones.com. Retrieved March 20, 2026.
- 1 2 "Doctoral Graduates | Department of Mathematics | Illinois". math.illinois.edu. Retrieved January 14, 2026.
- ↑ "Geneva Belford, 1932-2014". siebelschool.illinois.edu. Grainger Engineering Office of Marketing and Communications. Retrieved March 20, 2026.
- ↑ Böhme, S.; Fricke, W.; Güntzel-Lingner, U.; Henn, F.; Krahn, D.; Scheffer, U.; Zech, G. (November 11, 2013). Literature 1971, Part 2. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 978-3-662-12278-5. Retrieved March 20, 2026.
- ↑ Canuto, Enrico; Novara, Carlo; Carlucci, Donato; Perez-Montenegro, Carlos; Massotti, Luca (March 8, 2018). Spacecraft Dynamics and Control: The Embedded Model Control Approach. Butterworth-Heinemann. p. 163. ISBN 978-0-08-101795-1. Retrieved March 20, 2026.
- ↑ Cappellari, J. O.; Vélez, C. E.; Fuchs, Arthur J. (1976). Mathematical Theory of the Goddard Trajectory Determination System. Goddard Space Flight Center. p. 33. Retrieved March 20, 2026.
- ↑ Roberts, Charles E. (December 1, 1971). "An analytic model for upper atmosphere densities based upon Jacchia's 1970 models". Celestial mechanics. 4 (3): 368–377. doi:10.1007/BF01231398. ISSN 1572-9478. Retrieved January 14, 2026.
- ↑ Gurfil, Pini (October 19, 2006). Modern Astrodynamics. Elsevier. pp. 8–11. ISBN 978-0-08-046491-6. Retrieved March 20, 2026.
- ↑ Lara, Martin (2021). Hamiltonian Perturbation Solutions for Spacecraft Orbit Prediction (1 ed.). de Gruyter. p. 243. Retrieved March 20, 2026.
- ↑ Roberts, Charles E. (December 1, 1975). "Comments on the application of power series solutions to problems in celestial mechanics". Celestial mechanics. 12 (4): 397–407. doi:10.1007/BF01595387. ISSN 1572-9478. Retrieved January 14, 2026.
- ↑ de Korvin, Andre; Roberts, Charles E. (December 1, 1980). "Double adjoints of Hammerstein functionals defined on continuous functions". Annali di Matematica Pura ed Applicata. 126 (1): 93–102. doi:10.1007/BF01762502. ISSN 1618-1891. Retrieved January 14, 2026.
- ↑ Roberts, Charles E (September 1, 1992). "Sets of mutually orthogonal Latin squares with "like subsquares"". Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A. 61 (1): 50–63. doi:10.1016/0097-3165(92)90052-V. ISSN 0097-3165. Retrieved January 14, 2026.