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Ravi Vakil

68. Ravi Vakil

President, 2025-2026

Ph.D. Harvard, 1997

Ravi Vakil is the Robert Grimmett Professor of Mathematics at Stanford University. He joined the Stanford faculty in 2001 after postdoctoral appointments at Princeton and MIT.

Vakil is an algebraic geometer known for a range of creative and impactful results, with his work spanning enumerative geometry, topology, and classical algebraic geometry. Two of his well-known results include his famous "Murphy's Law" and his geometric Littlewood-Richardson rule. His teaching, lecturing, and service to mathematics is extensive. He was an inaugural AMS Fellow and received the AMS Centennial Fellowship (2001). Other honors for his work include an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a National Science Foundation CAREER grant, the Stanford Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching, 2004-2005, the Abel Prize Science Lecture (2013) and the Chauvenet Prize (2014).

Vakil has served on the AMS Executive Committee (2017-2021) and more than a dozen AMS committees during his 20-plus years of service to the AMS. He cofounded the Stanford Math Circle and launched the Stanford University Research Institute in Mathematics (SURIM, a summer undergraduate research program). Vakil's service to Stanford has augmented the undergraduate experience, including university fellowships and committees such as the Study of Undergraduate Education at Stanford (2010-2012), which revised the university's entire undergraduate structure. Vakil cofounded and serves on the board of directors of the nonprofit MathOverflow and is a founding and ongoing trustee of Proof School, a grade 6-12 liberal arts school "for kids who love math."

 

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