interval-related work by Fefferman and Seco mentioned in Notices AMS The last issue of the Notices of American Mathematical Society (No. 10, 
November 2004) has an article "Some of What Mathematicians Do" by Martin H. 
Krieger (pp. 1226-1230), an article that is specifically aimed at 
non-mathematical audience (and whose importance is emphasized in the Editor's 
Introduction to the issue). 

Among a few examples of mathematical activity, Krieger lists the work of our 
own Charles F. Fefferman and Luis A. Seco on providing a rigorous devitaion of 
the asymptotical formula for the ground state energy E of an atom as a function 
of its atomic charge Z. 

In deriving this formula, they used interval arithmetic. 

The explanation of how interval arithmetic was used and what exactly is the 
problem can be found, e.g., in their chapter Interval Arithmetic and Quantum 
Mechanics in R. Baker Kearfott et al., Applications of Interval Computations, 
Kluwer, 1996.

Once again, many thanks to Charles F. Fefferman and Luis A. Seco for their 
outstanding work. 


