Jeffrey Weeks Receives 2007 AMS Conant Prize

January 8, 2007

Providence, RI:

Jeffrey Weeks, an independent scholar residing in New York state, has received the 2007 AMS Levi L. Conant Prize. Presented annually by the American Mathematical Society, the Conant Prize recognizes an outstanding expository paper published in either the Notices of the AMS or the Bulletin of the AMS in the preceding five years. The prize was awarded on Saturday, January 6, 2007, at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Weeks is receiving the prize for his article

"The Poincare Dodecahedral Space and the Mystery of the Missing Fluctuations," Notices of the AMS, June/July 2004.

In this article, together with an earlier one "Measuring the Space of the Universe" (Notices, December 1998), co-authored with Neil Cornish, Weeks explains how extremely sensitive measurements of microwave radiation across the sky provide information about the origins and shape of the universe. After giving some physical background, Weeks discusses what kind of shape our universe could have. The three possibilities are a spherical universe, a Euclidean universe, or a universe that is a hyperbolic 3-manifold.

"Most accounts of the development of physical theories are presented after the dust has settled and the experimental evidence has convinced most scientists," the prize citation says. "Weeks has explained the mathematics behind models whose validity cosmologists debate while waiting for more experimental evidence... Weeks has given a rare glimpse into the role of mathematics in the development and testing of physical theories."

In 1999, Weeks was awarded a MacArthur "genius" fellowship and nowadays works as a freelance mathematician. He is well known for his geometry and topology software, as well as for his work in cosmology.

Find out more about AMS prizes at http://www.ams.org/prizes-awards.

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