Ingrid Daubechies
Ingrid Daubechies | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 17, 1954 Houthalen, Belgium |
| Occupation(s) | Physicist, mathematician |
| Known for | Wavelets, image compression technology, Daubechies wavelet |
Baroness Ingrid Daubechies (born 17 August 1954) is a Belgian-American physicist and mathematician distinguished for her groundbreaking contributions to the use of wavelets in image compression technology.
She is widely recognized for developing mathematical techniques that have significantly enhanced image-compression methods. Daubechies holds memberships in the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1992, she also participated as a juror for the Mathematical Sciences category of the Infosys Prize from 2011 through 2013.
Her legacy is strongly associated with the orthogonal Daubechies wavelet and the biorthogonal CDF wavelet. Wavelets from this family are integral to the JPEG 2000 compression standard.
Daubechies’ investigations combine automated approaches drawn from mathematics, technology, and biology to examine specimens such as bones and teeth. She has pioneered sophisticated image processing methods applied to authenticate and date masterpieces, including works by Vincent van Gogh and Rembrandt.
She serves on the board of directors for Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE), an initiative supporting women pursuing graduate studies in mathematical sciences. Daubechies was the first woman to hold the presidency of the International Mathematical Union (2011–2014) and was inducted into the Academia Europaea in 2015.
Early life and education
Born in Houthalen, Belgium, Daubechies is the daughter of Simonne Duran, a criminologist, and Marcel Daubechies, a civil mining engineer. Demonstrating exceptional mathematical aptitude from a young age, she was already familiar with shapes such as cones and tetrahedrons before turning six. Her rapid academic progress led her to enroll at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel at just 17 years old.
She earned her undergraduate degree in physics there in 1975 and subsequently engaged in research at the CNRS Center for Theoretical Physics in Marseille, collaborating with Alex Grossmann. This research laid the groundwork for her 1980 doctorate in theoretical physics from Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
Career
Following her PhD, Daubechies continued at Vrije Universiteit Brussel until 1987, advancing to research associate-professor status supported by an NFWO fellowship.
In 1986, during a visiting position at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in New York, she introduced compactly supported continuous wavelets utilizing quadrature mirror filter concepts. This innovation paved the way for applying wavelet theory within digital signal processing.
Daubechies joined Bell Laboratories in 1987 and authored her seminal 1988 article on orthonormal bases of compactly supported wavelets published in Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics.
She accepted a professorship at Rutgers University in 1991, where she taught mathematics until 1994. Subsequently, she moved to Princeton University, contributing extensively to applied and computational mathematics while becoming their first female full professor of mathematics. In 2004, she was appointed William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor.
In 2011, Daubechies took a position at Duke University as James B. Duke Professor with appointments in mathematics and electrical and computer engineering. Five years later, she co-established Duke’s Summer Workshop in Mathematics (SWIM), aimed at encouraging female high school seniors to pursue mathematics.
Between 2020 and 2021, Daubechies collaborated with fiber artist Dominique Ehrmann to lead a multidisciplinary team of mathematicians and artists in creating Mathemalchemy, an innovative touring exhibition blending art and mathematics.
Mathematical expertise applied to fine art restoration
Daubechies utilized advanced mathematical approaches in the field of art conservation, particularly focusing on the Ghent Altarpiece, a 15th-century masterpiece created by the van Eyck brothers. Her research group devised innovative techniques to counteract deterioration caused by aging and to rectify previous restoration errors. This was achieved through the use of high-resolution photography, X-ray imaging, and sophisticated filtering methods that enabled automatic detection of fissures. Additionally, they succeeded in interpreting inscriptions believed to be by Thomas Aquinas on the polyptych.
Her team further extended their work to assist in the restoration of the 14th-century Saint John Altarpiece by Francescuccio Ghissi, housed at the North Carolina Museum of Art. By applying machine-learning algorithms to isolate distinct features, they built upon methodologies initially developed during the Ghent project.
Recognition and distinctions
Daubechies has been honored with a multitude of distinguished awards acknowledging her groundbreaking contributions to mathematics and its applications. Early milestones in her career include receiving the Louis Empain Prize for Physics in 1984 and a MacArthur Fellowship in 1992. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993 and earned the American Mathematical Society Steele Prize for Exposition in 1994 for her seminal publication, Ten Lectures on Wavelets. Other significant recognitions comprise the AMS Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize (1997), election to the United States National Academy of Sciences (1998), and the IEEE Golden Jubilee Award for Technological Innovation.
In 2000, she made history as the first woman awarded the NAS Award in Mathematics for her foundational wavelet research, acknowledged as essential within applied mathematics. That same year, she also received the Eduard Rhein Basic Research Award. Subsequent honors include election to the American Philosophical Society (2003), delivering the Josiah Willard Gibbs Lecture (2005), being named Emmy Noether Lecturer (2006), and receiving the ICAM Pioneer Prize (2006).
Daubechies was conferred honorary doctorates by The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (2010) and Amherst College (2024). In 2011, she served as SIAM John von Neumann Lecturer and was awarded both the IEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal and the Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research. The Franklin Institute also presented her with their Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering that year. In 2012, King Albert II of Belgium bestowed upon her the title of Baroness; she additionally received the Nemmers Prize in Mathematics and the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award.
She delivered the German Mathematical Society’s Gauss Lecture in 2015 and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for her pioneering work in wavelet theory and its applications. The Simons Foundation honored her with a Math + X Investigator award, promoting collaborative interdisciplinary research.
In 2018, Daubechies became the inaugural female laureate of City University of Hong Kong’s William Benter Prize in Applied Mathematics, recognized for enabling breakthroughs such as mobile smartphone technology. That year she also secured the Fudan-Zhongzhi Science Award ($440,000) for her development of orthogonal Daubechies wavelets.
Designated a fellow of the Association for Women in Mathematics in 2019, she received that year’s L'Oréal-UNESCO International Award For Women in Science, celebrating exceptional achievements across STEM disciplines. She was also inducted into the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
In 2020, Daubechies was honored with the Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research. In 2023, she became the first woman to earn the prestigious Wolf Prize in Mathematics for her influential contributions to wavelet theory and harmonic analysis.
In 2024, she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Sciences degree from University of Pennsylvania and announced as recipient of The Bakerian Medal and Lecture 2025 by the Royal Society for outstanding achievements spanning wavelets, image compression, and broad scientific impact.
In January 2025, Daubechies was presented with the National Medal of Science, recognizing her status as one of America’s foremost scientists and innovators.
Personal life
In 1985, Ingrid Daubechies encountered mathematician Robert Calderbank during his three-month exchange visit from Bell Laboratories to Philips Research in Brussels. The couple wed in 1987 and have since raised two children, Michael and Carolyn Calderbank.
Publications
- Ten Lectures on Wavelets (1992), published by SIAM in Philadelphia.
- Orthonormal bases of compactly supported wavelets (1988), featured in Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, Volume 41, Issue 7.
- D. Aerts and I. Daubechies, A connection between propositional systems in Hilbert spaces and von Neumann algebras, Helv. Phys. Acta, 52, pp. 184–199, 1979.
- D. Aerts and I. Daubechies, A characterization of subsystems in physics, Lett. Math. Phys., 3(1), pp. 11–17, 1979.
- I. Daubechies et al., Iteratively reweighted least squares minimization for sparse recovery, Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, Vol. 63, Issue 1, 2009.
- Cohen, I. Daubechies, and A. Ron, How smooth is the smoothest function in a given refinable space?, Appl. Comp. Harm. Anal., 3(1), pp. 87–89, 1996.
- I. Daubechies, S. Jaffard, and J.L. Journe, A simple Wilson orthonormal basis with exponential decay, SIAM J. Math. Anal., 22(2), pp. 554–572, 1991.
Applications
Attribution
External links
- I. Daubechies, A Different Way to Look at Subband Coding, NJIT Symposium on Multi-Resolution Signal Decomposition Techniques: Wavelets, Subbands and Transforms, April 1990.
- An Interview with Ingrid Daubechies in the Girls' Angle Bulletin.
- "Ingrid Daubechies", Biographies of Women Mathematicians, Agnes Scott College
- Ingrid Daubechies' homepage at Duke University