Biography (adapted from Wikipedia)
Ronald E. Mickens was born February 7, 1943 in Petersburg, Virginia. He decided at the age of six to become a scientist and earned a Bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics from Fisk University, an HBCU, in 1964. He earned a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Vanderbilt University in 1968. After receiving a prestigious National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, he conducted research into elementary particle physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1968 to 1970.

Mickens returned to Fisk University as a faculty member in 1970 and later worked at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, from which he was recruited to what was then Atlanta University in 1981. He was named a Distinguished Fuller E. Callaway Professor in 1986. He is know an Emeritus Professor at Clark Atlanta University.

Mickens has made (and continues to make!) sigificant and columinous contributions to research in applied mathematics and theoretical physics. His vita lists well over 300(!) peer-reviewed publications and over a dozen books, the most recent was published in 2022 and is Mathematical Modelling with Differential Equations. Mickens may be most well-known for his work on nonstandard finite difference (NSFD) schemes.

Mickens has numerous awards and honors, such as being a Mathematically, Gifted & Black honoree (in 2017) and winning the Blackwell-Tapia Prize (in 2018). Mickens was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1999, with the citation "For his sustained service to the physics community and his original contributions on the applications of mathematics to the study of physical systems."