C. William Gear

2014 Distinguished Alumni Service Award

C. William Gear (MS Math ’57, PhD Math ’60) served as department head of CS @ ILLINOISfrom 1985 to 1990. A pioneer in numerical analysis and scientific computing, Gear is a leader in computer science education and industrial research. He created a seminal method for solving stiff ordinary differential equations on digital computers and wrote a landmark program for the automatic integration of ordinary differential equations. As Head, he oversaw the third addition to the Digital Computing Lab and founded the CS Alumni News.