The New York Times Inaugurates Belgian Professor of Mathematics Meryl Streep | Science

Ingrid Dubices, born in 1954 in Höthalen, Limburg, is a world authority in the field of waves – wave-shaped vibrations – for image compression. She started as a physics teacher at VUB and is now at the top of the world as a mathematics professor at famous American universities.

In 1987, the genius of Flemish mathematics invented the formulas for “Daubechies Wavelets”. This was a task for the development of the JPEG2000 standard. It is used for digital cinema and HD live broadcasting.

Finding the mathematical framework for those waves had something addictive for Daubechies. She previously said, “Mathematics is always addictive.” smoking. “How do you suddenly see the light after weeks of increasingly intense puzzles: That’s cool, isn’t it? You think you’re so stupid that you didn’t realize it before. I always try to enjoy that happy contentment for as long as possible.”

Working over the past three decades in the field of digital “signal processing”, Daubechies . has made New York times Possible with “digital transformation”. The paper refers to a colleague who describes it as “the Meryl Streep of Mathematics”.

However, the Flemish remain modest. “Even without my work, you could still watch a series on Netflix. Normally JPEG 2000 is used to compress images, which is true, but digital images can be compressed in other ways as well. Only the method based on my work turns out to be the most efficient.”

How busy Daubechies are with mathematics can be seen from the following anecdote from New York times. Apparently “Daubechies threw a big party for their 64th birthday a few years ago”. “She chose it – not the 60th or the 65th – because 64 is more important in mathematics. It is a power of two (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, …) and has a special impact in science, especially in the field of digital signal processing. When you represent powers of 2 in a binary way, you always get 1 followed by zeros (2 = 10, 4 = 100, 8 = 1000, 16 = 100,000,…). That way, when the Daubechies throw a big party, it becomes 1,000,000.”

Daubechies said in smoking. “Meanwhile, I’ve been doing math for so long that I’d miss it if I stopped. I constantly wonder how things work. When I notice something isn’t quite right, I think: ‘Teens, how is that possible?’ What I’m going to look for. My friends and kids think I’m I’m exaggerating a bit, but that’s where I am now.

Despite its success, Daubechies never attempted to monetize its business. “I have absolutely no interest in starting a business,” she said. the time. “If you have to recruit people, you also have to be able to put them away. This would give me stomach ulcers. I sometimes work with companies. But I don’t do consulting. I only do work that I find interesting myself. scientific.”

Ingrid Dubices was also honored in our country and given the title of Baroness by the royal family.