Professor Costică Mustăţa at his 75th anniversary
Professor Costică Mustăţa.
Professor Costică Mustăţa was born on June 11th 1942, in Băileşti, Dolj county.
He attended the primary school in his village and, after graduation in 1956, he attended there the newly founded Theoretical Highschool for the following four years. Between January 1961 – November 1962, he satisfied the military service, and then he activated as teacher at the School of Mechanics from Băileşti.
In September 1963 he was admitted at the Faculty of Mathematics-Mechanics of the Babeş-Bolyai University from Cluj. In the five years of faculty he has made substantial progress each year, and at the graduation in 1968, based on the faculty reports and grades, he was assigned to the Institute of Numerical Analysis of the Romanian Academy, led at that time by the famous mathematician Tiberiu Popoviciu.
All his subsequent scientific career, of 45 years, was connected to the Institute. From the very beginning, he studied the solving of problems from best approximation theory in abstract spaces and in function spaces. In 1973, he enrolled the PhD program, having as scientific advisor professor Elena Popoviciu, and in 1978 he successfully defended the thesis with title Best approximation of functions with conditions of given allure.
In the period when he activated at the Institute, since 1968 to his retirement, in 2013, he successively promoted, from assistant researcher to: researcher (1971), senior researcher III (1979), senior researcher II (1990) and finally, senior researcher I (1994).
Regarding his didactic activity, in the period October 1980 - July 1981 he taught courses in mathematical analysis and complex analysis in Algeria, at the Batna University. He has also taught, between 1998-2004, courses on Functional Analysis, Operators on finite dimensional spaces, as well as Analytic Geometry, at the North University of Baia Mare.
Professor Mustăţa has also occupied some representative and managing positions: from 1990 to his retirement, in 2013 he was a member of the Scientific Council of the Institute, and moreover, between 1990-2005 he was the secretary of the Scientific Council. He directed four grants with the Romanian Academy, and was an active member in other three research contracts.
He has served as Deputy Editor in Chief of the scientific journal Mathematica between 1992–2016. He was a member of of the Editorial Board of Southwest Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics (Cameron University, Lawton, USA), between 1997-2004, and at present is member of the Editorial Board of the journals Carpathian Journal of Mathematics (ISI Thomson Reuters ranked journal), since 2008, Creative Mathematics, since 2008, both edited by the North University of Baia Mare, and also of Journal of Numerical Analysis and Approximation Theory (edited by the Tiberiu Popoviciu Institute of Numerical Analysis and the Publishing House of the Romanian Academy).
He served (and still does) as reviewer for the well known Mathematical Reviews and ZentralBlatt fur Mathematik, where he elaborated an impressive number of – we may appreciate – competent and well written reviews.
The results in mathematics obtained by Costică Mustăţa are deep and profound. He published 68 scientific papers in reputed journals from abroad, such as Journal of Approximation Theory, Results in Mathematics, Mediterranean Journal of Mathematics or in journals from our country, highly appreciated at that time: Mathematica and Revue d’analyse numérique et de théorie de l’approximation (now Journal of Numerical Analysis and Approximation Theory). His works were favorable appreciated and cited by numerous mathematicians. He has also published two books
C. Mustăţa, M. Bărbosu, Algebra, analytic geometry and tensorial calculus, Editura Dacia, Cluj-Napoca, 2000, 232 pp., ISBN 973-35-1023-8 (in Romanian)
C. Mustăţa, I. Taşcu, Applied mathematics in economy, Risoprint Publishing House, Cluj-Napoca, 2004, part one 175 pp., ISBN 975-656-622-6, part two 210 pp., ISBN 973-656-669-2 (in Romanian).
Professor Mustăţa is a very good professional, and he substantially contributed to the welfare of the Institute, in the difficult period after 1975 (when the communist regime reduced the number of personnel from 50 to 6) and of the ’90s. He was a base member of the Institute, contributing by his knowledge to the Institute Seminars and therefore to the formation of many young graduates that were employed at the Institute.
May we add that he is an important node in the graph illustrating the Cluj-Napoca team on Numerical Analysis and Approximation Theory (founded by acad. Tiberiu Popoviciu) posted at the website http://ictp.acad.ro/. As an appreciation of his achievements and strong mathematical knowledge in Approximation Theory, the Scientific Council of the Institute has elected him in 2013 as honorary member of the Institute.
We wish him a healthy and wealthy life!
Cluj-Napoca, June 2, 2017. Emil Cătinaş and Ion Păvăloiu
Tiberiu Popoviciu Institute of Numerical Analysis
Romanian Academy
