Robert Edmund O'Malley

Robert Edmund O'Malley Jr. (1939—2020) was an American mathematician.

O'Malley studied electrical engineering and mathematics at the University of New Hampshire, where he received his baccalaureate degree in 1960 and his master's in 1961. He then studied differential equations and singular perturbations at Stanford University, where he received his doctorate in mathematics in 1966. After brief appointments at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), Bell Telephone Laboratories, the Courant Institute (New York University), and the Mathematics Research Center (the University of Wisconsin, Madison), O'Malley returned to New York University in 1968. He remained there, doing research on asymptotic methods and singular perturbations with Joseph Keller and a number of other stimulating colleagues and students. O'Malley spent a year at the University of Edinburgh, where his lecture notes formed the basis of his book, Introduction to Singular Perturbations (Academic Press, 1974). In 1973, he moved to the University of Arizona (Tucson) where he later organized a successful interdisciplinary program in applied mathematics, and where he applied singular perturbation ideas in control theory. After a sabbatical at Stanford University, O'Malley moved to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, New York) in 1981. At Rensselaer, he headed a mathematical sciences department which emphasized applied mathematics and computer science. There, he was active in campus affairs and served as the chairman of the faculty and the Ford Foundation Professor. Soon after a sabbatical at the Technical University of Vienna, where O'Malley studied asymptotic methods in semiconductor modeling, he moved to the University of Washington, Seattle.

O'Malley's final appointment was at the University of Washington Department of Applied Mathematics as an emeritus faculty member. He served as the president of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) (1991–1992). In 2009 he became a SIAM Fellow. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.