Rolf Rannacher

Rolf Rannacher (born 10 June 1948 in Leipzig) is a German mathematician and a professor of numerical analysis at Heidelberg University.

There he received his doctorate in 1974 with dissertation Diskrete Störungstheorie für das Punktsystem linearer Operatoren und Sesquilinearformen mit Anwendungen auf Operatoren vom Schrödinger Typ (Discrete perturbation theory for the point system of linear operators and sesquilinear forms with applications to operators of the Schrödinger type).

His research also deals with numerical fluid mechanics, including high-performance computer software development with his long-time collaborator John Haywood.

In the 1990s Rannacher dealt with adaptive mesh refinement in solving optimal control problems, often in collaboration with Claes Johnson and Endre Süli.

At Heidelberg's Interdisziplinären Zentrum für Wissenschaftliches Rechnen (acronym IWR, Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing), Rannacher was, in the early 1990s, one of the pioneers in the development of parallel computer algorithms for transputers.