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News 2006Proof of Poincaré Conjecture is Top Scientific Breakthrough of 2006Science has called the proof of the Poincaré Conjecture the 2006 Breakthrough of the Year. The conjecture states that a bounded three-dimensional manifold with no holes is topologically the same as a three-dimensional sphere. Henri Poincaré made the conjecture in 1904 but its proof remained elusive. In 2002 and 2003, Grigori Perelman posted three papers on the ArXiv claiming to prove the conjecture and a more general statement known as the Thurston Geometrization Conjecture. This past summer, Perelman was awarded a Fields Medal (which he declined to accept) for his proof. Conjectures No More? in the September 2006 Notices of the AMS has more background on both conjectures and the proof. The Science website also has background as well as nine other scientific breakthroughs in 2006. [Item posted 12/21/06]Mathematics at the 2007 AAAS MeetingThe 2007 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science will be in San Francisco, CA, from February 15 to 19. Some of the mathematics symposia are:
The AAAS meeting program has more information. [Item posted 12/19/06] Everett Pitcher, 1912-2006Everett Pitcher, who served as AMS Secretary from 1967 to 1988, died December 4 at the age of 94. Pitcher received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1935 under the direction of Marston Morse. He joined the faculty of Lehigh University in 1938 and spent almost all of the rest of his academic career there, serving as chair from 1960 until his retirement from the department in 1978. Pitcher was a founder of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, a member of its Board of Trustees from 1961 to 1963, and an AMS Associate Secretary from 1959 to 1966. In 1985 he received the Mathematical Association of America Award for Distinguished Service. [Item posted 12/14/06]Math Project Wins Siemens CompetitionDmitry Vaintrob, a senior at South Eugene High School in Eugene, Oregon, won first place and a US$100,000 scholarship in the 2006-07 Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology. Vaintrob's winning project is The string topology BV algebra, Hochschild cohomology and the Goldman bracket on surfaces. He was mentored in his project by Pavel Etingof, professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Siemens Competition judge Michael Hopkins (Harvard University) said of Vaintrob, "This brilliant young mathematician showed amazing maturity and perspective, which would be surprising in a graduate student, let alone a high school senior." In the team competition, Lucia and Philip Mocz of Mililani High School in Mililani, Hawaii won second place nationally and a $50,000 scholarship with their project, Computer-Aided Identification of Cancer from Photomicrographs by Entropy Analysis. Philip (a recent contestant in Who Wants to Be a Mathematician at the University of Hawai'i ) and Lucia applied mathematics to improve the efficiency of cancer detection. A Siemens Foundation press release has more information. [Item posted 12/6/06]Mathematician Elected to CongressJerry McNerney, a Ph.D. mathematician from Pleasanton, California, has won election to Congress representing California's eleventh district. McNerney beat incumbent Republican Congressman Richard Pombo. Congressman-elect McNerney received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of New Mexico in 1981, and has been an AMS member since 1977. More information is available at his website. [Item posted 11/22/06]G. Baley Price, 1905-2006G. Baley Price died November 7. He was a very active member of the mathematical community, serving as president of the Mathematical Association of America (1957-1958), as editor of the Bulletin of the AMS (1950-1957), and helping launch Mathematical Reviews. He received his Ph.D. in 1932 from Harvard University under the direction of G.D. Birkhoff. Price was on the faculty at the University of Kansas from 1937 to 1975, and was chair from 1951 to 1970. He helped form the School Mathematics Study Group, which led to the "New Math" in the 1960s. In World War II, Price did operations research work for the U.S. Army Eighth Air Force. He received the MAA's Distinguished Service Award in 1970. The May 2005 Notices of the AMS contains an article celebrating his 100th birthday. Also online is an article he wrote in 1990 on the founding of Mathematical Reviews . [Item posted 11/21/06]Terence Tao to Receive SASTRA Ramanujan PrizeThe 2006 SASTRA Ramanujan Prize will be awarded to Terence Tao of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). The prize citation cites Tao's significant contributions in number theory, harmonic analysis, representation theory, partial differental equations, combinatorics, and ergodic theory. The SASTRA Ramanujan Prize, launched in 2005, is for outstanding contributions to areas of mathematics influenced by Srinivasa Ramanujan. The $10,000 prize will be awarded at the International Conference on Number Theory and Combinatorics, Dec 19-22, at SASTRA University in Kumbakonam, India, Ramanujan's home town. The prize news release has more information. [Item posted 11/3/06] Sujatha to Receive Ramanujan PrizeRamdorai Sujatha, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (India), will receive the US$10,000 Ramanujan Prize for 2006. Sujatha was chosen in recognition of her work on the arithmetic of algebraic varieties and her substantial contributions to non-commutative Iwasawa theory. The award ceremony will take place on December 18 at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy. The Ramanujan Prize was established by ICTP to honor young mathematicians who have conducted outstanding research in developing countries. The prize is supported by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters through the Abel Fund, with the cooperation of the International Mathematical Union. More information is at the Abel Prize website. [Item posted 11/1/06] Paul Halmos, 1916-2006Paul Halmos passed away October 2 in Los Gatos, California. He was the author of more than a dozen books, many of them familiar to mathematicians around the world, and was acknowledged for his expository skill, both in writing and speaking. He received many awards during his lifetime, including the AMS Steele Prize (1983, for his many graduate texts) and the MAA Gung and Hu Award (2000, for distinguished service to mathematics). For many years, he was active in the governance of the AMS, serving in many positions including as vice-president (1981-82). [Item posted 10/3/06]New Version of MathSciNet is ReleasedThe newest version of MathSciNet provides improved navigation to the various components of the Mathematical Reviews (MR) database. The search screens are simpler in appearance and the search result pages are easier to read. The search functionality of the previous version is retained in a familiar format, but users may more readily and effectively locate the more than 2.1 million publications in the database, which grows daily. MathSciNet currently includes 733,590 direct links to articles in over 1,800 journals, and uniquely identifies 461,380 authors. Read more information about the MR database and subscription options. [Item posted 9/29/06]New Prime Number RecordThe Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, a distributed computing project, has discovered the largest known prime number: 232,582,657 -1, a number with 9,808,358 digits. It is the 44th known Mersenne prime number (one of the form 2p -1). The number was discovered at Central Missouri State University by Curtis Cooper and Steve Boone, who also discovered the previous prime record holder. A US$100,000 award will go to the discoverer of a prime with 10 million digits. [Item posted 9/26/06]Terence Tao Receives MacArthur GrantTerence Tao (UCLA) has been awarded a $500,000 "genius" grant from the MacArthur Foundation. The Foundation describes Tao as a "mathematician bringing technical brilliance and profound insight to a host of seemingly intractable problems in such areas as partial differential equations, harmonic analysis, combinatorics, and number theory." One of Tao's recent successes, with Ben Green, is the proof that there are arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions of prime numbers. Last month, Tao received a Fields Medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid. The Fields Medal citation called Tao "a supreme problem solver whose spectacular work has had an impact across several mathematical areas." The MacArthur Foundation website has more information on Tao and the other 2006 MacArthur Fellows. [Item posted 9/19/06]Jacob Palis elected TWAS PresidentJacob Palis, professor of mathematics at the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics in Brazil, has been elected President of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS). Palis is recognized internationally as a leading mathematician in the field of dynamical systems and has received many internatonal awards. He has been a fellow of the Academy since 1991, and will assume his three-year term in January 2007. Read the news release to learn more about Palis and TWAS. [Item posted 9/8/06] 2006 Fields Medals AwardedAt the opening ceremony of the 2006 International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM), four Fields Medals were awarded. The medalists are Andrei Okounkov, Grigory Perelman, Terence Tao, and Wendelin Werner. The King of Spain presided over the ceremony and bestowed the medals. In announcing the medal awarded to Perelman, John Ball, president of the International Mathematical Union, stated that Perelman had declined to accept the medal. At a later press conference, Ball said that he had spoken personally and at length with Perelman about his decision to decline the medal. While Ball was disappointed that Perelman remained steadfast in refusing the award, he noted that it is Perelman's right to refuse the medal if he wishes and described their discussions as polite and pleasant. Ball also said that Perelman will be recorded as having been awarded a Fields Medal but as having declined to accept it. Also awarded prizes at the opening ceremony were Jon Kleinberg, who received the Nevanlinna Prize, and Kiyoshi Itô, who received the first-ever Gauss Prize. Itô, 91, could not attend the ceremony, and his daughter, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, accepted the prize on his behalf. In September, Ball will travel to Japan and present the prize to Itô in a special ceremony. An AMS press release has more details about the six winners. The ICM opening ceremony featured a guitar, violin, and bass trio playing Spanish music, as well as a video presentation connecting the art and architecture of Spain to mathematics. About a dozen television cameras recorded the event, and over 100 reporters attended. Much of the media interest was generated by the King's presence, but a good deal was also inspired by Perelman. After the ceremony lectures were given on the work of the prizewinners: Giovanni Felder spoke on the work of Okounkov, John Lott spoke on the work of Perelman, Charles Fefferman spoke on the work of Tao, Charles Newman spoke on the work of Werner, and John Hopcroft spoke on the work of Kleinberg. Another highlight of the opening day of the Congress was the plenary lecture by Richard Hamilton, who described his work of more than two decades that formed the basis for Perelman's breakthrough results, which have provided a path for proving the Poincaré and Geometrization Conjectures. [Item posted 8/22/06] Three Math Projects Earn 2006 Davidson FellowshipsThe Davidson Institute has announced its 2006 Fellows. Among the 16 fellows are three students who won scholarships for their math projects. Michael Viscardi, of San Diego, CA, one of three students nationwide to win the top US$50,000 scholarship, won for his project "On the Solution of the Dirichlet Problem with Rational Holomorphic Boundary Data." Yi Sun of San Jose, CA won a $25,000 scholarship for "On the Expected Winding Number of a Random Walk on the Unit Lattice," and Anarghya Vardhana of Beaverton, OR won a $10,000 scholarship for her project "Novel Method of Computing Jacobi Symbols for Mersenne Numbers." The Davidson Institute's announcement of its 2006 Fellows has more information, including biographies of the fellows and project descriptions. [Item posted 8/8/06.]AWM Essay ContestTo increase awareness of women's ongoing contributions to the mathematical sciences, the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) is sponsoring an essay contest for biographies of contemporary women mathematicians and statisticians in academic, industrial, and government careers. The contest is open to students in the following categories: Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, and College Undergraduate. Winners will receive a prize, and their essays will be published on the AWM web site. The deadline for submissions is November 3, 2006. The contest web page has more information. [Item posted 7/25/06]2006 IMO ResultsChina, with six gold medals, won the 2006 International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) in Ljubljana, Slovenia. China finished with 214 points, out of a possible 252. Russia was second with 174 points, followed by Korea (170), Germany (157) and the United States (154). Zarathustra Brady and Arnav Tripathy of the U.S. team earned gold medals; teammates Zachary Abel, Ryan Ko, Yi Sun, and Alex Zhai each earned a silver medal. More information on the U.S. team is below. The 2006 IMO website has complete results of the competition, in which 90 countries participated. The IMO is an annual event in which high school students compete in a two-day examination. Next year's IMO is in Vietnam. [Item posted 7/17/06]Petition by AWMThe Association of Women in Mathematics has approved a petition urging the removal of the vice-chair of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, Dr. Camilla Benbow, for reasons described in their petition.The AMS is committed to working for the increased participation of women in mathematics at all levels. [Item posted 7/7/06] 2006 U.S. Math Olympiad TeamThe six members of the U.S. team who will compete at the 47th International Mathematical Olympiad are:
The 2006 Olympiad will be in Ljubljana, Slovenia from July 11 through the 17th, with the exams taking place on the 12th and 13th. Pictures of the U.S. team and officials are online. [Item posted 7/5/06] Irving Kaplansky, 1917-2006Kaplansky died on June 25 at the age of 89. He made significant contributions to algebra and other fields, and was the author of many important texts. He was on the winning team, from the University of Toronto, of the first Putnam competition in 1938 and was the first Putnam Fellow. Kaplansky received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1941 under the direction of Saunders Mac Lane. He taught at the University of Chicago from 1945 to 1984, serving as chair from 1962 to 1967. Kaplansky was director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute from 1984 to 1992. He was very active in AMS governance and in its publications, serving as AMS president from 1985 to 1986. Kaplansky was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was an honorary member of the London Mathematical Society. He received the Leroy P. Steele Prize Career Award (now called Lifetime Achievement) in 1989 for "his lasting impact on mathematics, particularly mathematics in America." In his response to the award, he gave this advice: "spend some time every day learning something new that is disjoint from the problem on which you are currently working (remember that this disjointness may be temporary), and read the masters." More information about Kaplansky is available online. [Item posted 6/26/06]Mumford and Wu Receive 2006 Shaw PrizeOn June 21, 2006, the Shaw Prize Foundation announced winners of the Shaw Prize for 2006. In the mathematical sciences the prize is awarded to David Mumford of Brown University in Providence, USA, for his contributions to mathematics and to the new interdisciplinary fields of pattern theory and vision research, and to Wentsun Wu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, for his contributions to the new interdisciplinary field of mathematics and mechanization. The two will share the US$1-million prize. A news release is available on the Shaw Foundation website.[Item posted 6/23/06]Chan to Head NSF's Mathematical and Physical SciencesThe National Science Foundation (NSF) has named Tony Chan, Dean of Physical Sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles, to be Assistant Director for Mathematical and Physical Sciences at NSF. Chan will guide and manage approximately one billion dollars in funding for research in mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, materials science, and multidisciplinary activities. "We are delighted that NSF can benefit from Tony's extraordinary record as a scientist and an administrator, especially at this critical time in the history of mathematics and physical sciences," said NSF Director Arden L. Bement, Jr. Chan will start the position October 1, 2006. An NSF press release has more information. [Item posted 6/20/06]Hirotugu Akaike to receive 2006 Kyoto PrizeHirotugu Akaike, professor emeritus at the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, is the 2006 Kyoto Prize Laureate in Basic Sciences. He receives the award "for his contributions to statistical science and modelling through his development of the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC)." He will receive a diploma, Kyoto Prize Medal, and 50 million yen (approximately US$446,000). Read the prize citation, Akaikie's profile and the Inamori Foundation press release. [Item posted 6/13/06] Two Key Papers on the Poincaré ConjectureWithin the past two weeks two papers have been issued on proofs of the Poincaré Conjecture: "A Complete Proof of the Poincaré and Geometrization Conjectures--Application of the Hamilton-Perelman Theory of the Ricci Flow," by Huai-Dong Cao and Xi-Ping Zhu (Asian Journal of Mathematics , June 2006) and "Notes on Perelman's Papers," by Bruce Kleiner and John Lott (on ArXiv, May 25, 2006). [Item posted 6/7/06] D'Ambrosio and Cobb Receive ICMI MedalsThe International Commission on Mathematical Instruction (ICMI) recognizes outstanding achievement in mathematics education research through the Felix Klein Medal, which is named for the first president of ICMI (1908-1920) and honors lifetime achievement, and through the Hans Freudenthal Medal, which is named for the eight president of ICMI (1967-1970) and honors a major cumulative program of research. The Felix Klein Medal for 2005 is awarded to Ubiratan D'Ambrosio, Emeritus Professor at the University of Campinas in Brazil. This distinction acknowledges the role D'Ambrosio has played in the development of mathematics education as a field of research and development throughout the world, above all in Latin America. It also recognizes his pioneering role in the development of research perspectives that are sensitive to the characteristics of social, cultural, and historical contexts in which the teaching and learning of mathematics take place, as well as his insistence on providing quality mathematics education to all, not just to a privileged segment of society. The Hans Freudenthal Medal for 2005 is awarded to Paul Cobb, Professor at Vanderbilt University, USA. This distinction acknowledges his outstanding contribution to mathematics education: a rare combination of theoretical developments, empirical research, and practical applications that has had a major influence on the mathematics education community and beyond. The full citations may be found on the ICMI web site. [Item posted 5/16/06] National Mathematics Advisory Panel NamedU.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings today announced the 17 panelists chosen for the National Mathematics Advisory Panel (NMP). The panel will examine and summarize the scientific evidence related to the teaching and learning of mathematics, especially algebra. The panel is chaired by Dr. Larry Faulkner, former chemistry professor and President Emeritus of the University of Texas at Austin. The other 16 panelists are:
The NMP will issue an interim report by January 31, 2007 and a final report no later than February 28, 2008. The Department of Education has posted a fact sheet about the panel and its mission. [Item posted 5/15/06] 2006 Menger AwardsThe following students received Karl Menger Memorial Awards at the 2006 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in Indianapolis.
Mathematicians Elected Fellows of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesAmong the Fellows elected to the American Academy of Arts & Letters in 2006 are mathematicians Jeff Cheeger (Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University), David D. Eisenbud (University of California, Berkeley), Martin Golubitsky (University of Houston), Robert K. Lazarsfeld (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor), Charles M. Newman (Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University), Craig Tracy (University of California, Davis), and Harold Widom (University of California, Santa Cruz). Among those elected in the Computer Sciences section is Leonard M. Adleman. The news release provides an overview of the Academy and lists the 2006 Fellows in alphabetical order and by Class and Section. [Item posted 5/11/06]A Century of Mathematics in America books now onlineA Century of Mathematics in America Part I, Peter Duren, Editor, with the assistance of Richard A. Askey and Uta C. Merzbach (American Mathematical Society, 1988, 477 pp.); Part II, Peter Duren, Editor, with the assistance of Richard A. Askey and Uta C. Merzbach (American Mathematical Society, 1989, 585 pp.); and Part III, Peter Duren, Editor, with the assistance of Richard A. Askey, Harold M. Edwards, and Uta C. Merzbach (American Mathematical Society, 1989, 675 pp.) are now posted online to read and download. The volumes include addresses, reminiscences, historical surveys of mathematical culture and mathematical topics, articles on mathematics at some American universities, and brief biographies and tributes by and about prominent mathematicians of the twentieth century. [Item posted 5/10/06]Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science TeachingOn May 4 mathematics teachers from each state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Territories, and the U.S. Department of Defense Schools received the 2005 Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching (PAEMST). The awardees received a US$10,000 award from the National Science Foundation (the federal agency that administers the program) and an all-expense paid trip to Washington D.C. for the official awards ceremony. The week-long celebration in Washington, D.C. also included conversations with leaders in education policy, professional development activities, and opportunities to meet dignitaries from the executive and legislative branches. The AMS hosted a breakfast for the middle and high school mathematics teachers, and participated in the Information Exchange, providing resources for the teachers and their students. See the PAEMST website for the list all the Presidential Awardees. [Item posted 5/8/06]William A. Massey Wins 2006 Blackwell-Tapia PrizeDr. William A. Massey, Edwin S. Wiley Professor of Operations Research and Financial Engineering at Princeton University, will be awarded the 2006 Blackwell-Tapia Prize for outstanding record of achievement in both his mathematical research and his efforts to bring more underrepresented minorities into the mathematical sciences. He has done cutting edge research in many areas, with his current interests being dynamical queueing systems; performance, pricing, priority, and provisioning models for communication systems and services; asymptotic analysis of stochastic networks; and stochastic orders on posets. He also works as primary national organizer for the annual Conference for African American Researchers in the Mathematical Sciences (CAARMS) and serves on many other national committees and conferences that address problem of underrepresented minorities, and has mentored many successful minority mathematical scientists. The prize will be awarded at the Fourth Blackwell-Tapia Conference, to be held at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) in Minneapolis on November 3-4, 2006. Read more about Massey and the Blackwell-Tapia Prize. [Item posted 4/27/06]Mathematicians Elected to the NASOn April 25, the National Academy of Sciences announced the election of 72 new members. Among them are several who work in the mathematical sciences: Leonard Adelman, University of Southern California; Leslie Greengard, New York University; Henryk Iwaniec, Rutgers University; and Dan-Virgil Voiculescu, University of California, Berkeley. Elected as foreign members are Lennart A. E. Carleson, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, and Aloisio Pessoa de Araujo, Instituto de Matemática Pura e Aplicada, Brazil. The Academy has posted a news release that lists all new members. [Item posted 4/25/06]Candes to Receive Waterman AwardThe National Science Foundation (NSF) has chosen Emmanel Candes, professor of applied and computational mathematics at the California Institute of Technology who works in harmonic analysis, as the winner of the 2006 Alan T. Waterman Award, worth $500,000. John Cozzens, an NSF program officer said, "Candes' work is nothing short of revolutionary. It promises to take the field to a whole new level and have many applications in everyday technologies, especially in medical imaging." The Waterman award recognizes an outstanding young researcher in science or engineering. Candidates may not be more than 35, or be seven years beyond receiving their doctorate. The 2006 award will be presented on May 9. More details about Candes and the award are online in an NSF announcement. [Item posted 4/20/06]2006 Epsilon Fund AwardsAMS Epsilon Fund for Young Scholars will award grants to the following 2006 summer programs for talented math students: Ross Mathematics Program, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH; Texas State Honor Summer Math Camp, Texas State University, San Marcos; Michigan Math and Science Scholars Summer Program, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; PROMYS, Boston University, Boston, MA; Canada/USA Mathcamp, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA; Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics (HCSSiM), Hampshire College, Amherst, MA; All Girls/All Math Summer Camp for High School Girls, University of Nebraska, Lincoln; University of Chicago Young Scholars Program, University of Chicago, IL; MathPath, University of California, Santa Cruz; SEARCH, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA; Texas Tech University Summer Mathematics Academy, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX; and PROTaSM (Puerto Rico Opportunities for Talented Students in Mathematics), University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez. Read more about the Epsilon Fund. [Item posted 3/27/06]Lennart Carleson Wins Abel PrizeThe Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has awarded the 2006 Abel Prize to Lennart Carleson, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. The prize amount is 6 million Kroner, over US$900,000. Carleson is receiving the prize "for his profound and seminal contributions to harmonic analysis and the theory of smooth dynamical systems." The Abel Committee citation says: "Carleson's work has forever altered our view of analysis. Not only did he prove extremely hard theorems, but the methods he introduced to prove them have turned out to be as important as the theorems themselves." Carleson was director of the Mittag-Leffler Institute from 1968 to 1984 and was president of the International Mathematical Union from 1978 to 1982. King Harald of Norway will present the prize to Carleson at a ceremony in Oslo on May 23. The Abel Prize website has more information about Carleson, the prize, and previous winners. [Item posted 3/23/06]Mahlburg Wins First PNAS Paper of the Year PrizeKarl Mahlburg will receive the first Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Paper of the Year Prize for his paper "Partition congruences and the Andrews-Garvan-Dyson crank. " The paper was chosen from among all papers published in 2005 in PNAS and was a unanimous choice of the selection committee. The award will be presented at the PNAS Spring Editorial Board Meeting and will be announced April 23 at the award ceremony at the NAS Annual Meeting. Mahlburg is a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who will graduate this year and will begin a C.L.E. Moore Instructorship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the fall. [Item posted 3/22/06]George Mackey, 1916-2006George Mackey, who worked in the fields of representation theory, group actions, functional analysis and mathematical physics, passed away on March 15. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1942 and remained on the faculty there until his retirement in 1985. Mackey was an AMS member since 1941, gave the AMS Colloquium Lecture in 1961, and served as AMS Vice President and Council member in the mid 1960's. The Harvard University Mathematics Department History Resources web page includes photographs of Mackey, links to sources with more information about him, and an announcement that a memorial service is scheduled for Saturday, April 29, 2006 at 2 p.m. at Harvard's Memorial Church. [Item posted 3/22/06] Langlands Awarded 2006 Nemmers PrizeRobert P. Langlands, Hermann Weyl Professor of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, has been awarded the US$100,000 Frederic Esser Nemmers Prize in Mathematics from Northwestern University for his "fundamental vision connecting representation theory, automorphic forms and number theory." This vision is captured in the so-called Langlands program, which has inspired deep and far-reaching results by many researchers. Langlands received the 2005 AMS Steele Prize for a Seminal Contribution to Research, which recognized his 1970 Springer Lecture Notes volume that contained what are now known as the Langlands conjectures. "It's hard to think of any other instance in the history of mathematics where conjectures gave so accurate a road map of what would turn out to be true in so many different situations," the prize citation states. "And few other conjectures have generated so much research of such high quality." Langlands' other honors include the AMS Cole Prize in Number Theory (1988), the first National Academy of Sciences Award in Mathematics (1988), and the Wolf Prize (1995-96). A news release about the Nemmers Prize is available on the Northwestern University web site. Lars Peter Hansen of the University of Chicago received the Nemmers Prize in Economics. [Item posted 3/16/06]2006 Intel Science Talent Search WinnersThree mathematics projects finished in the top ten in this year's Intel Science Talent Search. Yi Sun of San Jose, CA won the second place award, a US$75,000 scholarship, for his project involving the winding number of a function. Nicholas Michael Wage of Appleton, WI won fourth place and a $25,000 scholarship for his study of generalized Paley graphs, and Kimberly Megan Scott of Wellesley, MA won tenth place and a $20,000 scholarship for her analysis of Ehrenfeucht-Fraisse games. The Intel Corporation and Science Service presented the awards at a banquet in Washington, D.C. The Science Service website has a complete list of the winners, with information about the students and their projects. [Item posted 3/16/06] Lehigh Lecture Series to Honor Everett PitcherLehigh University's Department of Mathematics is holding a free lecture series honoring famed mathematician, Professor A. Everett Pitcher. Pitcher was mathematics department chair at Lehigh University from 1960 to 1978. He also served as Secretary of the AMS from 1967 to 1988 and is known for his research in the fields of topology and Morse theory. This year's guest lecturer Sir Roger Penrose is presenting "Before the Big Bang: An Outrageous Solution to a Profound Cosmological Puzzle" on March 15. The public is invited. Read the Lehigh University news release for more information. [Item posted 3/6/06] Mathematics at the AAAS Annual MeetingThe 2006 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) will take place February 16-20 at the America's Center in St. Louis, MO. The meeting features Beyond Pi: Grand Challenges in the Mathematical Sciences, a day-long event taking place on Saturday February 18, which is made up of the following four symposia:
Other symposia with mathematics-related themes are:
The AAAS website has more information about the meeting. [Item posted 2/6/06] Math on NOVA scienceNOWThe January 10 PBS show NOVA scienceNOW, airing at 8 p.m. eastern time, is about some of the top science stories of 2005, including the proof by Goldston, Yildrim, and Pintz about gaps between prime numbers. The segment on the proof will include an original song about prime numbers, featuring cameos by mathematicians. See a preview of the episode at the show's website. The January 10 episode can be viewed online beginning January 11. A video of the song "Twin Prime Conjecture," is available at iTunes. [Item posted 1/6/06]Donaldson and Narasimhan Receive 2006 King Faisal PrizeSimon Donaldson of Imperial College, London, and M. S. Narasimhan of the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research in Mumbai have been jointly awarded the 2006 King Faisal International Prize for Science. The prize, presented by the King Faisal Foundation, consists of a gold medal and a cash prize of US$200,000, which the two recipients will share. Donaldson's early research revolutionized four-dimensional differential topology, revealing surprising new phenomena through the application of ideas from gauge theory. He has also made foundational contributions to complex and symplectic geometry and to global analysis of partial differential equations on manifolds. Narasimhan is a pioneer of the study of moduli spaces of holomorphic vector bundles on projective varieties. His work on projectively flat connections was the starting point for the development of the so-called Kobayashi-Hitchin correspondence linking the differential and algebraic geometry of vector bundles over complex manifolds. [Item posted 1/5/06]Prime Number Record ExtendedThe Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has discovered the largest known prime number. The number, 230,402,457 - 1, has more than nine million digits and is the 43rd known Mersenne prime. (Mersenne primes are prime numbers of the form 2p - 1.) The number was discovered by a team at Central Missouri State University, led by mathematics professor Curtis Cooper and associate dean Steven Boone, through GIMPS, a distributed computing project. [Item posted 1/4/06]Mathematics Programs That Make a DifferenceThe American Mathematical Society recognizes two outstanding mathematics programs that have made significant, successful efforts to encourage underrepresented minorities to continue in the study of mathematics: The graduate program at the University of Iowa and the Summer Institute in Mathematics for Undergraduates (SIMU) Research Experience for Undergraduates program conducted at the Universidad de Puerto Rico, Humacao from 1998 to 2002. The programs have brought more persons from underrepresented minority backgrounds into some portion of the pipeline beginning at the undergraduate level and leading to an advanced degree in mathematics, or have retained them in the pipeline; have achieved documentable success in doing so; and are replicable models. Read about Mathematics Programs That Make a Difference, which includes the citations and in-depth program descriptions of these two programs. [Item posted 1/3/06] |
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