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News 2009
 |
Kathrin Bringmann (at left), a number theorist
at the University of Minnesota and the University of Cologne, has
been awarded the Alfried Krupp-Förderpreis for Young
Professors. The one million Euro prize, for a five-year period, is
awarded by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation. She
is the third mathematician to win the annual prize--Ursula
Gather received the prize in 1987 and Albrecht
Böttcher won in 1992. Bringmann is well known for her joint
work with her postdoctoral mentor Ken Ono
(University of Wisconsin-Madison) on Ramanujan's mock theta
functions, which Ramanujan wrote about in 1920 as he was dying,
although he did not provide details about the functions, including
their definition. Following seminal work of the Dutch mathematician
Sander Zwegers, Bringmann and Ono have built and
applied their theory to many topics in mathematics: partitions and
q-series, Moonshine, and elliptic curves, to name a few. On the mock
theta functions, Bringmann said, "Imagine that a famous composer
left, after his death, a symphony written in a secret code that only
he himself could read." More
information about the prize and Bringmann's research (in German)
is at the DMV (Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung) website. (Image
courtesy of Kathrin Bringmann.) [Item posted 7/2/09]
|
The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA
Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) have
announced the members of the Common Core State Standards Development Work
Group and Feedback Group. The Standards Development Work Group, is
currently engaged in determining and writing college and career readiness
standards in mathematics. This group is composed of content experts from
Achieve, Inc., ACT, and the College Board. This group will be expanded
later in the year to include additional experts to develop the mathematics
standards for grades K-12. Similar efforts are underway in English. The
members of the mathematics Work Group are:
- Sara Clough, Director, Elementary and Secondary
School Programs, Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.
- Phil Daro, Senior Fellow, America’s Choice
- Susan K. Eddins, Educational Consultant, Illinois
Mathematics and Science Academy (Retired)
- Kaye Forgione, Senior Associate and Team Leader for
Mathematics, Achieve
- John Kraman, Associate Director, Research, Achieve
- Marci Ladd, Mathematics Consultant, The College
Board and Senior Manager and Mathematics Content Lead, Academic
Benchmarks
- William McCallum, University Distinguished
Professor and Head, Department of Mathematics, The University of Arizona
and Mathematics Consultant, Achieve
- Sherri Miller, Assistant Vice President,
Educational Planning and Assessment System Development, Education
Division, ACT, Inc.
- Ken Mullen, Senior Program Development
Associate—Mathematics, Elementary and Secondary School Programs,
Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.
- Robin O’Callaghan, Senior Director, Mathematics,
Research and Development, The College Board
- Andrew Schwartz, Assessment Manager, Research and
Development, The College Board
- Laura McGiffert Slover, Vice President, Content and
Policy Research, Achieve
- Douglas Sovde, Senior Associate, Mathematics,
Achieve
- Natasha Vasavada, Senior Director, Standards and
Curriculum Alignment Services, Research and Development, The College
Board
- Jason Zimba, Faculty Member, Physics, Mathematics,
and the Center for the Advancement of Public Action, Bennington College
and Cofounder, Student Achievement Partners
The NGA Center and CCSSO have also created a Feedback Group to provide
expert input on draft documents, although final decisions regarding the
common core standards document will be made by the Standards Development
Work Group. Members of the mathematics Feedback Group are:
- George Andrews, The Pennsylvania State University,
Evan Pugh Professor of Mathematics and AMS President
- Hyman Bass, University of Michigan, Samuel
Eilenberg Distinguished University Professor of Mathematics and
Mathematics Education, former AMS President
- David Bressoud, Macalester College, DeWitt Wallace
Professor of Mathematics and President of the Mathematical Association
of America
- John Dossey, Illinois State University,
Distinguished University Professor of Mathematics Emeritus
- Scott Eddins, Tennessee Department of Education,
Mathematics Coordinator and President, Association of State Supervisors
of Mathematics
- Brian Gong, The National Center for the Improvement
of Educational Assessment, Executive Director
- Roger Howe, Yale University, Professor of
Mathematics
- Henry S. Kepner, Jr., University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Professor, Curriculum and Instruction and
Mathematical Sciences
- Suzanne Lane, University of Pittsburgh, Professor
in the Research Methodology Program, School of Education
- Robert Linn, University of Colorado, Distinguished
Professor Emeritus, and Co-Director of the National Center for Research
on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing
- Jim Milgram, Stanford University, Professor of
Mathematics, Emeritus, Department of Mathematics
- Fabio Milner, School of Mathematical and
Statistical Sciences, Arizona State University, Director, Mathematics
for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education
- Roxy Peck, California Polytechnic State University,
San Luis Obispo, Associate Dean, College of Science and Mathematics and
Professor of Statistics
- Nora Ramirez, TODOS: Mathematics for ALL, President
- William Schmidt, Michigan State University, College
of Education, University Distinguished Professor
- Uri Treisman, University of Texas, Professor of
Mathematics and Public Affairs and Executive Director, Charles A. Dana
Center
- Vern Williams, Mathematics Teacher, HW Longfellow
Middle School, Fairfax County, Virginia Public Schools
- W. Stephen Wilson, Johns Hopkins University,
Professor of Mathematics
The groups' work on K-12 standards is expected to be completed in
December. State and national education organizations will have an
opportunity to review and provide evidence-based feedback on the draft
documents throughout the process. See the core standards website for more
information. [Item posted 7/2/09]
In January, motivated by concern about the impact current economic
conditions are having on the job market for recent Ph.D.s, AMS President
James Glimm appointed a Task Force on Employment Prospects chaired by
Linda Keen, who recently completed ten years of service on the AMS Board
of Trustees. The goal of the task force was to provide information and
recommendations to departments, individual job seekers, and professional
societies to help them with challenges of the difficult market. In
February, 68 departments were invited to respond to a brief survey
designed to help gauge the severity of the current problem, and all 68
departments returned their responses to the online survey. Among other
findings, the departments reported a drop of approximately 40 per cent in
the number of doctorate-required positions that they had tried to fill for
the upcoming academic year (compared to the previous academic year). The
task force is very grateful for the help of the surveyed departments and
believes that the survey provides the most comprehensive snapshot of the
current state of the market for early career mathematical scientists. The
task force report
and survey summary are now posted. The AMS will follow up on the task
force recommendations, and welcomes feedback and suggestions emailed to
paoffice at ams dot org, subject line "task force." [Item posted
7/1/09]
 Front (left to right): Alicia Zhane, Sohini
Sengupta, Almas Abdulla, Yale Wang Fan. Back (left to
right): Sameer Kirtikumar Deshpande, Jeffrey Chan, Sarah Lee
Sellers, Joshua Vekhter, Andrei Triffo, and Ed Connors. Click here to view a
larger image. |
The 2009 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF)
was held May 10-15, 2009 at the Reno- Sparks Convention Center in
Reno, Nevada. More than 1500 students in grades nine through twelve
from over 50 countries participated in the fair. Student finalists
who compete at the ISEF go through a multi-step process to qualify
and have won an all-expense-paid trip to the fair. In addition to
numerous grand awards presented by the ISEF, sixty-seven federal
agencies and professional and educational organizations, including
the AMS, participated by giving special awards. Prizes given by the
AMS included cash, certificates, AMS tote bags and books.
|
For the AMS this was the twenty-first year of participation and it was
the nineteenth year of the presentation of the Karl Menger Awards. The
members of the 2008-2009 AMS Menger Prize Committee and AMS Special Awards
Judges were Ed Connors, University of Massachusetts
(chair); Doron Levy, University of Maryland; and
David Scott, University of Puget Sound. In the
Mathematics Category forty five entries were individuals and twelve were
submitted by teams of two or three students. The AMS gave awards to one
first-place winner, two second-place winners, four third-place winners
(one team of three students) and honorable mentions to five others. The
Karl Menger Memorial Prize winners for 2009 are as follows:
- First-Place Award (US$1,000): "Graph
Crossings and Cyclic Permutations: Towards a Proof of Zarankiewicz’s
Conjecture," by Joshua Vekhter, Williamsville East High
School, East Amherst, NY
- Second-Place Awards (US$500): "Infinite
Sums of Zeta Functions and Other Dirichlet Series," by Andrei
Triffo, Synge Street CBS Secondary School, Dublin, Ireland; "A
Quantum Algorithm for Molecular Dynamics Simulation," by Yale
Wang Fan, The Catlin Gabel School, Portland, OR
- Third-Place Awards (US$250): "Universal
Law for the Distribution of Odd Periodic Cycles within Chaos in
Nonlinear Dynamical Systems: An Analysis of Rigid Bifurcation," by
Almas Abdulla, West Shore Junior/Senior High School,
Melbourne, FL; "Dirichlet Prime Magic Square," by Sarah Lee
Sellers, Hedgesville High School, Hedgesville, WV; "Controlling
HIV from Transformation into AIDs: Mathematical Modeling of HIV
Dynamics," by Sohini Sengupta, Ocean Lakes High School,
Virginia Beach, VA; "Survival Analysis of Gene Expression Data Using a
Hybrid Dimension Reduction Technique," by Sameer Kirtikumar
Deshpande, Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science, Denton,
TX, Jeffrey Chan, William P. Clements High School,
Sugar Land, TX, and Alicia Zhang, Liberal Arts and
Science Academy High School, Austin, TX
- Honorable Mention Awards: "Sequences of
Reducible 0,1 Polynomials," by Martin Augustine
Camacho, Central High School, St. Paul, MN; "Convergence
Acceleration for the Power Series Representation of the Exponential
Integral," by Michael Christopher Yurko, Detroit
Catholic Central High School, Novi, MI; "MatheMagical Pool," by
Wenhan Cui, Cookeville High School, Cookeville, TN; "An
Analysis of Erdos's Conjecture," by Matthew Henry
Stoffregen, Woodoland Hills High School, Pittsburgh, PA; "A
Relativistic Generalization of the Navier-Stokes Equations to
Quark-Gluon Plasmas," by Nilesh Tripuraneni, Clovis
West High School, Fresno, CA.
The AMS's participation in the Intel-ISEF is supported in part by
income from the Karl
Menger Fund, which was established by the family of the late Karl
Menger. [Item posted 7/1/09]
The six members of the U.S. team who will compete in the 2009
International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) are (in alphabetical order):
- John Berman, John T. Hoggard High School,
Wilmington, NC
- Wenyu Cao, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA
- Eric Larson, South Eugene High School, Eugene, OR
- Delong Meng, Baton Rouge Magnet High School, Baton
Rouge, LA
- Evan O'Dorney, home-schooled, Danville, CA
- Qinxuan Pan, Thomas S. Wootton High School,
Rockville, MD
The IMO takes place in Bremen, Germany, July 10-22. This is the 50th
IMO. The first was in Romania in 1959 (it was not held in 1980). More
information about IMO
2009 is online. [Item posed 6/29/09]
Click here to view a
larger image. |
The first Mathematics Research
Communities (MRC) summer conference of 2009,
Mathematical Challenges of Relativity,
concludes today at the Snowbird Resort in Utah. The week-long
conference, organized by Mihalis Dafermos
(University of Cambridge), Alexandru Ionescu
(University of Wisconsin, Madison), Sergiu
Klainerman (Princeton University), Chair, and
Richard Schoen (Stanford University), drew 40
early-career mathematicians. The MRC summer conferences are funded
by the National Science Foundation, for an initial period of three
years. Each conference is the first event in a program that will
include special sessions at the Joint Mathematics Meetings, a
longitudinal study, and a continuation of the connections and
collaborations via an electronic network. The next three conferences
are Inverse Problems (June 20-26),
Modern Markov Chains and Their Statistical
Applications (June 27-July 3) and Harmonic
Analysis (June 27-July 3). [Item posted
6/19/09] |
 Image courtesy of Imperial College, London |
 |
Simon K. Donaldson (Imperial College, London) and
Clifford H. Taubes (Harvard University) have been awarded
the 2009 Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences "for their many brilliant
contributions to geometry in three and four dimensions." The two will
share the US$1,000,000 prize. Donaldson is the Royal Society Research
Professor of Pure Mathematics and President of the Institute for
Mathematical Sciences at Imperial College. He received his Ph.D. from
Oxford University in 1983 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in
1986. He received the Nemmers Prize in
Mathematics in 2008. Taubes is the William Petschek Professor of
Mathematics at Harvard, who received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1980. He is
a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the
National Academy of Sciences. In 1991 Taubes received the AMS Veblen Prize
and in 2008 he won the NAS Award in
Mathematics. The following is taken from the citation
written by the Shaw Prize Mathematical Sciences Committee.
Understanding "three-dimensional space and four-dimensional space-time has
been fundamental for both geometers and physicists in the 20th and 21st
centuries. Simon K. Donaldson and Clifford H. Taubes are the two geometers
who have transformed the whole subject by pioneering techniques and ideas
originating in theoretical physics, including quantum theory. ... [Between
them, they] have totally changed our geometrical understanding of space
and time." The Shaw
Prize is an international award managed by the Shaw Prize Foundation,
based in Hong Kong. The presentation ceremony will take place October 7.
[Item posted 6/16/09]
The Mathematics Subject Classification (MSC) has undergone a general
revision, with some additions, changes, and corrections, to create
MSC2010, the successor to the present MSC2000. As anticipated, there are
no changes at the two-digit level but refinements have been made at the
three- and five-digit levels. Starting in July, Mathematical
Reviews (MR) and Zentralblatt für Mathematik (Zbl) will use
MSC2010 as their classification scheme. MR and Zbl collaborate in
maintaining the MSC, which is used by these reviewing services and many
others to categorize items in the mathematical sciences literature. MR and
Zbl carefully considered input received from the community in recent
years, especially since the announcement of the projected revision in
2006, and used it in the preparation of their joint MSC revision. The
final MSC2010, the result of four working drafts, can be viewed at http://msc2010.org/. These drafts were
publicly developed using the MSCwiki at this site, which will remain open
for public view and to document any corrections to MSC2010 that may be
made. Various PDF forms and an interactive TiddlyWiki version of MSC2010
are also there. All information about MSC2010 is jointly shared by MR and
Zbl. The editors--Graeme Fairweather, Executive Editor, MR, and Bernd
Wegner, Editor-in-Chief, Zbl--and their staffs wish to express their
gratitude to the numerous members of the community for their assistance in
this lengthy revision process. [Item posted 6/16/09]
"Complex Math, Simple Sum: 3 Awards in 5 Years" is an
article in the June 1 Times about the three Courant Institute
faculty who have won the Abel Prize since 2005: Peter Lax
(2005), Srinivasa S.R. Varadhan (2007), and
Mikhail Gromov (2009). When Varadhan won in 2007, King
Harald of Norway asked him, "Since you are a specialist in probabilities,
what is the probability that you'll have another prize winner from your
institution?" He replied that he thought the chance was "Probably very
small," yet this year Mikhail Gromov became the latest winner from New
York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. AMS
Executive Director Don McClure is quoted in the article, saying that the
Abel Prize "has the same distinction as a Nobel Prize, and there's no
other institution in the United States or in the world that has had such a
concentration of these awards." More on math-related articles
appearing in newspapers, magazines, radio, and television is in Math in the Media. [Item
posted 6/2/09]
The International Mathematical Union (IMU) and the Chern Medal
Foundation have launched a new mathematical prize, the Chern Medal Award,
in memory of the late Shiing-Shen
Chern. The award is for an individual whose lifelong achievements in
mathematics warrant the highest level of recognition. Half of the monetary
award of US$500,000 will be donated to organizations of the recipient's
choice. The first Chern Medal will be awarded at the opening ceremony of
ICM 2010 in Hyderabad, India (August 19, 2010). An IMU
press release (pdf) has more information. [Item posted 6/1/09]
In response to the economic recession and its impact on the academic
community, the American Mathematical Society is freezing the prices of its
subscription-based products--journals, MathSciNet and the Mathematical
Reviews (MR) Database fee--at the 2009 levels. This price freeze applies
to all 2010 subscriptions, in both print and electronic formats, including
MathSciNet consortia subscriptions. The publishers of journals distributed
by the AMS, also concerned about the impact of the global recession on the
academic community, have joined the AMS in freezing their journal prices
for 2010 as well. See the complete
list of AMS journals and AMS-distributed journals.
In addition, the AMS will not increase the 2009 dues rate for AMS
Institutional Members in 2010.
Contact for questions and subscription renewals: AMS Customer Services
Department, 201 Charles Street, Providence, RI 02904 USA; email: cust-serv@ams.org; telephone:
800-321-4267 (US and Canada) or 401-455-4000 (worldwide). [Item posted
5/20/09]
 |
King Harald of Norway presented the 2009
Abel Prize to Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov, Permanent
Professor, Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (France), and
professor at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical
Sciences, at an award ceremony in Oslo, May 19. Queen Sonja and the
Norwegian Minister of Research and Higher Education, Tora Aasland,
were among the many other prominent persons present. The Abel Prize,
which carries an award of 6,000,000 Norwegian kroner (over
US$900,000), is awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and
Letters. The prize was awarded to Gromov for his revolutionary
contributions to geometry. Kristian Seip, the chairman of the Abel
Committee, elaborated on this in his speech at the award ceremony:
"Mikhail Gromov is a remarkably creative mathematician. He is always
in pursuit of new questions and is constantly thinking of new ideas
for solutions of long-standing problems. The work of Gromov will for
a long time to come continue to be a source of inspiration for many
important mathematical discoveries." The Abel Prize website has news about the ceremonies,
photographs and a video. (Photo: Erlend Aas/Scanpix) [Item
posted 5/19/09] |
In response to a loss of jobs as a result of the poor economy, seven
National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded mathematical sciences research
institutes have created 45 new one- and two-year positions for recent
Ph.D.s, allowing them to teach at community colleges and other
higher-education institutions or to participate in projects tied to
business and industry. More than 700 applications were received for the 45
positions, including 400 from people who received their Ph.D. this year.
The seven institutes are: the American Institute of Mathematics, the
Institute for Advanced Study, the Institute for Mathematics and its
Applications, the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, the
Mathematical Biosciences Institute, the Mathematical Sciences Research
Institute, and the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences
Institute. A press release from the institutes has more information about the
positions. [Item posted 5/13/09]
 |
The AMS and the MAA will hold a discussion on
mathematics and the theatre to be held Monday, May 18 from 7 to 9
p.m. at the MAA'’s Carriage House (1781 Church Street) in
Washington, DC. This event is being held in conjunction with the Folger Theatre’s
production of the acclaimed play Arcadia, which runs
until June 14 at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre in Washington.
Folger cast members, Folger Dramaturg Michele Osherow, and
Production Mathematics Consultant Manil Suri
(University of Maryland, Baltimore County) will discuss the
challenges of representing mathematicians–and mathematics–on stage.
The MAA site has an RSVP form and
more information on the discussion. [Item posted
5/8/09] |
Mike Hopkins (Harvard University), Douglas
Ravenel (University of Rochester) and Mike Hill
(University of Virginia) announced at the Atiyah80 conference in
Edinburgh, UK, on April 21 that they have solved the 45-year-old Kervaire
invariant problem. The announcement is available to Nature
subscribers at "Hidden
riddle of shapes solved," by Philip Ball (Nature News, 1 May
2009). The Kervaire problem is "one of the major outstanding problems in
algebraic and geometric topology," states Nick Kuhn (University of
Virginia). Ball explains "although it looks at face value to be extremely
abstruse, the mathematics involved in the solution might be relevant to
quantum theory and string theory, not to mention brane theory, which has
been invoked to explore some issues in Big Bang cosmology." See more on the
solution of this problem online. [Item posted 5/4/09]
The National
Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) latest report, based on
scores on tests given in the 2007-08 school year to more than 26,000 9-,
13- and 17-year olds, found that in math:
- Average scores for 9- and 13-year olds increased since the last
report in 2004 and since the first assessment in 1973;
- Average scores for 17-year olds showed no significant change when
compared to scores in both 2004 and 1973;
- Racial/ethnic gaps in average scores did not show significant change
in any of the three age groups since 2004, but those gaps had narrowed
since testing began; and
- The percentage of students taking "higher-level" math increased (for
13-year olds, 30% took algebra vs. 16% in 1986; for 17-year olds, 19%
took calculus or precalculus vs. 6% in 1978).
The NAEP is conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics
(part of the U.S. Department of Education), which is the primary federal
entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education. [Item
posted 4/29/09]
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has announced the election of 72
new members and 18 foreign associates from 15 countries in recognition of
their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.
Members elected in the mathematical sciences are:
- Sun-Yung Alice Chang, professor, department of
mathematics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
- Percy A. Deift, professor, Courant Institute of
Mathematical Sciences, New York University, New York
- John E. Hopcroft, professor, computer science
department, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
- John W. Morgan, professor of mathematics,
department of mathematics, Columbia University, New York
- Christos Papadimitriou, C. Lester Hogan Professor,
computer science division, University of California, Berkeley
- Gilbert Strang, professor of mathematics,
department of mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge
- Cumrun Vafa, Donner Professor of Science,
department of physics, Center for Fundamental Laws of Nature, Harvard
University, Cambridge, MA
- Wing H. Wong, professor of statistics and professor
of health research and policy, department of statistics, Stanford
University, Stanford, CA
Established in 1863, the NAS is an honorific society of distinguished
scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the
furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general
welfare. An NAS
press release has a list of all those elected. [Item posted
4/28/09]
The American Academy of Arts & Sciences has announced its 2009
election of new fellows. The 210 new fellows include the following people
from the mathematical sciences:
- Spencer Janney Bloch, University of Chicago
- Robert A. Fefferman, University of Chicago
- Dorian Goldfeld, Columbia University
- Douglas R. Hofstadter, Indiana University
- Maria Klawe, Harvey Mudd College
- Stanley J. Osher, University of California, Los
Angeles
- Michael Sipser, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Terence Tao, University of California, Los Angeles
- Gunther Uhlmann, University of Washington
- Ruth J. Williams, University of California, San
Diego
The induction ceremony for this year's class, which also includes
Nelson Mandela and actor Dustin Hoffman, will take place October 10 at the
academy's headquarters in Cambridge, MA. The Academy of Arts &
Sciences is an independent policy research center founded in 1780. The
full list of the new fellows and foreign honorary members, sorted
alphabetically or by subject, can be linked to from an academy news release.
[Item posted 4/20/09]
Image courtesy of Ken
Golden. |
The April 3 issue of Science has a profile of
Ken Golden (pictured at left), this year's Mathematics Awareness Month
Committee chair. The article, "Cold Equations" by Dana Mackenzie,
describes how Golden has used mathematics to understand the
properties of sea ice--an important, yet poorly understood,
component in the climate. Golden also relates some of his adventures
studying sea ice in the Antarctic. He is the author of a feature
article in the May issue of Notices (pp. 562-584), "Climate
Change and the Mathematics of Transport in Sea Ice." Read more
about Golden's work with sea ice and listen to him talking about his
work and his adventures in the Mathematical Moment
Going With the Floes. Note: Also in the April 3 issue of
Science is a picture of AMS Associate Executive Director
Sam Rankin, head of the AMS Washington Division, with House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi, who is interviewed about government funding of math
and science ("Nancy Pelosi: Foursquare for Science," p. 24).
More on math-related articles appearing in newspapers,
magazines, radio, and television is in Math in the Media.
[Item posted 4/6/09] |
Harvard team members (left to right) Iurie
Boreico, Zachary Abel, and Arnav Tripathy. Photo courtesy of the
Department of Mathematics, Harvard University.) |
Below are the team and individual winners of the 69th William
Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, which took place last
December 6. The mathematics department of the first-place team,
Harvard University, receives US$25,000, and each Harvard team member
receives $1000. Team winners, in order, with team members in
alphabetical order, are:
- Harvard University (Zachary Abel, Iurie
Boreico, and Arnav Tripathy)
- Princeton University (Peter Z. Diao, John V.
Pardon, and Adrian I. Zahariuc)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(Qingchun Ren, Xuancheng Shao, and Yufei Zhao)
- Stanford University (Young Hun Jung, Nathan
K. Pflueger, and Jeffrey Wang)
- California Institute of Technology (Jason C.
Bland, Zarathustra E. Brady, and Brian Lawrence)
|
The Putnam Fellows, the top five individual scorers, each receive
$2500. They are, in alphabetical order:
- Brian R. Lawrence (California Institute of
Technology)
- Seok Hyeong Lee (Stanford University)
- Arnav Tripathy (Harvard University)
- Bohua Zhan (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
- Yufie Zhao (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Viktoriya Krakovna, of the University of Toronto, is
the winner of the Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize, which is awarded to a
woman whose performance on the exam is "particularly meritorious," and
which has a cash award of $1000.
The Putnam Competition is for North American undergraduates and is
administered by the Mathematical Association of America. More than 3600
students from 545 colleges and universities participated in the
competition. Problems,
solutions, and results from the 2008 exam and from previous exams, are
online. [Item posted 3/27/09]
Abel Laureate 2009: Mikhail L. Gromov.
Photo: Gérard Uferas |
The 2009 Abel Prize is awarded to Mikhail
Leonidovich Gromov, Permanent Professor, Institut des
Hautes Études Scientifiques, France, and professor at New York
University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, "for his
revolutionary contributions to geometry." The award is 6 million
Norwegian Kroner, approximately US$950,000, 700,000 Euros.
Gromov's name is forever attached to deep results and important
concepts within Riemannian geometry, symplectic geometry, string
theory and group theory. The Abel committee says: "Mikhail Gromov is
always in pursuit of new questions and is constantly thinking of new
ideas for solutions to old problems. He has produced deep and
original work throughout his career and remains remarkably creative.
The work of Gromov will continue to be a source of inspiration for
many future mathematical discoveries." Mikhail L. Gromov has
received many distinguished international awards, including the
Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences (2002), the Balzan Prize (1999), the
Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research (1997),
the Lobatchewski Medal (1997) and the Wolf Prize (1993). He is a
foreign member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of l'Académie
française de Sciences. Gromov is the third faculty member from the
Courant Institute to win the Abel Prize in the seven years that it's
been awarded. Peter
Lax won in 2005 and Srinivasa
S.R. Varadhan won in 2007. |
The work of Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov has had
tremendous impact on geometry and has reached from there into major
applications in analysis and algebra. The American Mathematical Society
extends hearty congratulations and good wishes to Mikhail Gromov on his
award of the 2009 Abel Prize. One cannot imagine a more worthy
recipient. --- George Andrews, AMS President
The Abel Prize is awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and
Letters for outstanding scientific work in the field of mathematics.
Gromov will be given the prize by His Majesty King Harald at an award
ceremony in Oslo, Norway, on May 19. More information about Gromov, his
work, the prize, and a video of today's announcement is also on the Abel Prize website.
Articles on Gromov published in the Notices of the AMS: "Gromov Receives
Nemmers Prize", August 2004: "Encounter with a
Geometer I," by Marcel Berger, February 2000; "Encounter with a
Geometer II," by Marcel Berger, March 2000; "Leroy P. Steele
Prize," March 1997 . [Item posted 3/26/09]
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The AMS
Graduate Student Blog is a new blog by and for math
graduate students, managed by Frank Morgan,
Vice-President, American Mathematical Society, and Professor of
Mathematics at Williams College.
"Graduate students are the future of the AMS, and they have a
lot to talk about," says Morgan. |
The Graduate Student Editorial Board members are Asher Auel, Adam
Boocher, Diana Davis, Daniel Erman, Fernando Galaz, Brian Katz, Alex
Levin, Kathryn Lindsey, Andrew Obus, David Shea Vela-Vick, Clay
Shonkwiler, Annalies Z. Vuong, and Tom Wright, and Morgan hopes that more
grad students from around the country will be interested in joining the
board. The blog entries to date concern organizing a reading seminar, how
to give a good mathematics talk, advice for beginning teaching assistants,
navigating seminars and finding an advisor--topics of great importance to
graduate students, who are all are invited to join the community by
posting comments, questions and advice on the blog.
The American Mathematical Society encourages all graduate students in
the mathematical sciences to visit and use the AMS Graduate
Student Blog, hosted by Williams College. [Item posted
3/17/09]
Jeffrey Lagarias (University of Michigan) will give
the upcoming Erdős Memorial Lecture, From Apollonian circle packings
to Fibonacci numbers, on March 28 at the 2009 Spring Central Section
Meeting, which will take place at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. In the lecture he'll describe results in number theory
and group theory that arise from Apollonian circle packings, and contrast
some of the properties relating to the circles' curvatures with those of
Fibonacci and Lucas numbers. Among Lagarias' many interests are discrete
geometry, low-dimensional topology, number theory, and operations
research. See more
on Lagarias, the lecture and the meeting. The Erdős Memorial
Lecture is an annual invited address made possible by a fund created
by Andrew Beal, a Dallas banker and mathematics enthusiast. The lecture is
named for the prolific mathematician Paul
Erdős, who died in 1996. The Beal Prize Fund, now US$100,000, is held
by the AMS until it is awarded for a correct solution to the Beal Conjecture. At
Mr. Beal's request, the interest from the fund is used to support the
Erdős Memorial Lecture. [Item posted 3/16/09]
 |
Brian Conrey, executive director of the American
Institute of Mathematics, will give the 2009 Levi L. Conant Lecture,
The Riemann Hypothesis--A million dollar mystery, at
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) on March 30. The Riemann
Hypothesis is one of Hilbert's 23 problems, proposed in 1900, and is
one of seven Millennium Prize
Problems, each of which carries a US$1,000,000 prize from the
Clay Mathematics Institute for a solution. In the talk Conrey will
explain the hypothesis and some of the colorful history associated
with efforts to solve it. Conrey is a winner of the 2008 Levi L. Conant
Prize for his 2003 Notices article "The
Riemann Hypothesis." The public lecture series, featuring Conant
Prize winners, is sponsored by WPI and hosted by the Institute's
Department of Mathematical Sciences. The department has posted more
information about the lecture. (Plot of one over the zeta
function, courtesy of Brian Conrey.) [Item posted
3/12/09] |
UPDATE: a video of
Conrey's talk is available on the Worcester Polytechnic Institute
website. (Windows Media Player is required.) [4/16/09]
 Elizabeth Marincola from Society for
Science and the Public and Intel Chairman Craig Barrett award first
place to Eric Larson (Photo: Robin Weiner/Intel) |
Eric Larson, of Eugene, OR, won first place and
a $100,000 scholarship in the 2009 Intel Science Talent Search
(ISTS) for his project The Classification of Certain Fusion
Categories, in which he classified fusion categories of
dimension pq2 where p and q
are distinct primes. Eric was a silver medalist at the 2007
International Mathematics Olympiad and won a $50,000 scholarship in
the 2008 Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology. Also
finishing in the top 10 in the ISTS was Noah
Arbesfeld of Lexington, MA, who was awarded sixth place and
a $25,000 scholarship for his project On the Structure of Lower
Central Series Quotients of a Free Associative Algebra. See more
on the competition and the top ten projects. The ISTS is funded
by the Intel Corporation and the Intel Foundation, and administered
by the Society for Science and the Public. [Item posted 3/11/09]
|
The AMS has chosen ten summer mathematics programs to receive Epsilon
grants for 2009:
At the 2008 Hampshire College Summer
Studies in Mathematics (HCSSiM) camp. The frisbees commemorate
Mathematica's 20th anniversary and each student was given a copy of
Mathematica as well as the frisbee.
"HCSSiM has taught me a whole new way of viewing and learning
math."
"I've never been around so many people who love math as
much as I do, and it's great. Nobody's afraid to be who they are...
The people here are just interesting and exhilarating to be
around."
At the 2008 PROMYS summer
program at Boston University.
|
- Achievement in Mathematics Program (AMP),
Lamar University, Beaumont, TX, Sandra Richardson and Otilia
Urbina, directors
- All Girls/All Math, University of Nebraska,
Lincoln, Gwendolyn Hines, director
- Hampshire College Summer Studies in
Mathematics (HCSSiM), Hampshire College, Amherst, MA,
David C. Kelly and Sarah-Marie Belcastro, directors
- MathPath, Colorado College, Colorado Springs,
Stephen Maurer and George R. Thomas, directors
- Michigan Math and Science Scholars Summer
Program, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Stephen
Debacker and Patrick Nelson, directors
- PROMYS, Boston University, Boston, MA, Glenn
Stevens, director
- PROTaSM (Puerto Rico Opportunities for
Talented Students in Mathematics), University of Puerto Rico,
Mayaguez, Luis F. Caceres, director
- Research Science Institute, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, Joanne P. DiGennaro and
Cliff Bowman, directors
- Ross Mathematics Program, The Ohio State
University, Columbus, OH, Daniel B. Shaprio, director
- Texas State University Honors Summer Math
Camp, Texas State University, San Marcos, Max Warshauer,
director
"It's always exciting trying to keep up with unleashed
mathematical minds as they share the joy of discovering,
conjecturing, and proving; they push collaboratively through much
more material, much more quickly, and apprehend it much more deeply
than when faculty try to drag them through a syllabus." ---
David C. Kelly, co-director, HCSSiM |
In 2008, the Epsilon Fund, the endowment whose income supports the
Young Scholars program, reached the initial funding goal of US$2 million.
A very generous anonymous gift helped achieve that goal, together with
numerous contributions from AMS members and others in the mathematical
community. The AMS continues to place a high priority on supporting the
programs that bring mathematically talented high school students together
and introduce them to mathematical research. [Item posted 3/4/09]
 |
George E. Andrews, the Evan Pugh Professor in
the Department of Mathematics at Pennsylvania State University,
begins this week a two-year term as President of the American
Mathematical Society. He succeeds James G. Glimm, Distinguished
Professor of Applied Mathematics and Statistics at Stony Brook
University.
"I greatly look forward to my work as President of the American
Mathematical Society," Andrews said. "I shall support and promote
mathematics to the best of my ability. This is a difficult time for
the nation and an especially difficult time for mathematicians early
in their careers. I hope to find ways to aid these people in their
efforts to get established."
Andrews' main area of research is in number theory, specifically,
the theory of partitions and related areas. He is best known for his
study of the works of the brilliant self-taught Indian
mathematician, Srinavasa Ramanujan. The news
release includes more information about Andrews' career,
research, and thoughts on becoming AMS President. [Item posted
2/3/09] |
An article in Monday's Wall Street Journal, "Doing
the Math to Find the Good Jobs," lists "mathematician" as the top job
in the U.S. "Actuary" and "statistician" were ranked second and third,
respectively. The rankings, done by CareerCast.com, were based on
work environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands, and
stress. According to the study, the median annual salary for a
mathematician is $94,160. The job of lumberjack finished last (200th) in
the study. [Item posted 1/6/09]
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