Dr. John Lund
John Lund passed away on December 3, 2025. In 2021, he was awarded the title of Professor Emeritus of Mathematics by the Board of Regents. This was the citation the Board of Regents endorsed in conferring this honor.
John Lund received his B.S. degree in Mathematics from the University of Tennessee in 1971, followed by an M.S. in 1973 and Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1978 from the University of Utah. He joined the faculty as an assistant professor of mathematics at Montana State University in September 1978. He was tenured and promoted to associate professor in 1985 and fully promoted to the rank of professor in 1990.
Dr. Lund is an applied mathematician and numerical analyst whose research spanned classical analysis, approximation theory, and special function theory. Dr. Lund has worked jointly with many scholars throughout his career and has always taken great pride in fostering collaborations. From 1988 through 1996, he co-organized (along with Dr. Ken Bowers) a set of biennial conferences on Computation and Control, which featured researchers in control theory and numerical computation. These conferences resulted in five edited volumes in Birkhauser’s Computation and Control series.
Dr. Lund chaired six PhD committees in mathematics. He’s the author of Sinc Methods for Quadrature and Differential Equations, a text which showcases his expertise in this method for treating differential equations. He is also the author of an undergraduate linear algebra text, The Matrix Eigenvalue Problem. His record of teaching mathematics to students at MSU for over four decades is rarely matched.
From 1993-2001, Dr. Lund led the Department of Mathematical Sciences as Department Head. He also served several terms as the Director of Graduate Studies in the department and through the years has contributed to the smooth-functioning of the department. In recent years, he represented MSU on the statewide Corequisite Initiative for mathematics.
For these and other contributions, the Board of Regents of Higher Education is pleased to confer on Dr. John Lund the rank of Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Montana State University and wishes him well for many years in the future.
Those wishing to donate to a scholarship in John’s honor could consider a gift to the Academic Improvement in Mathematical Sciences fund: When John was the department head, he worked to ensure that this fund would be available to provide scholarships to students in the mathematical sciences.