News Release

I. M. SINGER RECEIVES
AMS STEELE PRIZE

Contact at AMS: Dr. John H. Ewing, AMS Executive Director
e-mail: jhe@ams.org
telephone: 401-455-4100
fax: 401-331-3842

January 20, 2000

PROVIDENCE, RI --- Isadore M. Singer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has won Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement. Awarded by the American Mathematical Society, the Steele Prize is one of the highest distinctions in mathematics. The prize will be awarded at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Washington, DC on January 20, 2000.

The citation for the prize says that Singer's groundbreaking papers on the so-called Atiyah-Singer Index Theorem (written with Michael F. Atiyah and V. K. Patodi) "are among the great classics of global analysis. They have spawned many developments in differential geometry, differential topology, and analysis." Indeed, Singer received the AMS Bocher Memorial Prize for some of this work in 1969.

The citation goes on to say, "Moreover, in addition to his work in pure mathematics, Singer has labored for two decades to bring together mathematicians and theoretical physicists. This has been not simply a matter of interpersonal relations and seminar talks, but has entailed a long effort to understand, rework and make available to mathematicians the deepest results of modern theoretical physics. This renaissance of serious interaction between mathematicians and physicists, which dates from the mid-1970s, has had a dramatic effect on mathematics, and Singer has played a major role in this development."

Founded in 1888 to further mathematical research and scholarship, the 30,000-member American Mathematical Society fulfills its mission through programs and services that promote mathematical research and its uses, strengthen mathematical education, and foster awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and to everyday life.