News Release

Daubechies Receives AMS Satter Prize

January 9, 1997

For more information, please contact: Allyn Jackson, telephone 401-455-4109; fax 401-331-3842; e-mail axj@ams.org.

Providence, RI---Ingrid Daubechies, a mathematician at Princeton University, has received the AMS Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize. The prize was awarded on January 9, 1997, during the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego.

The Satter Prize was established in 1990 using funds donated by Joan S. Birman, an internationally recognized mathematician at Barnard College/Columbia University. Professor Birman made the donation in memory of her sister, Ruth Lyttle Satter, to honor Satter's commitment to research and to encourage women in science. The prize is awarded every two years to recognize an outstanding contribution to mathematics research by a woman in the previous five years.

Professor Daubechies is receiving the prize for her deep and beautiful analysis of wavelets and their applications. A mathematical tool bearing resemblance to the Fourier transform, wavelets are used in a wide range of applications and are particularly suited to compressing detailed images. Recently the FBI adopted a wavelet-based system for efficient storage of fingerprint data.

Professor Daubechies is one of the world's leading experts in wavelet research. According to the committee choosing her to receive the prize, her work "is a permanent contribution not only to mathematics but to science and engineering." Her best known achievement is her construction of compactly supported wavelets in the late 1980s. Over the last five years she has continued their development on the theoretical level and in applications in physics and signal processing. Her research has resulted in many pathbreaking developments.

Ingrid Daubechies received her Bachelor's degree in 1975 and her Ph.D. in 1980 from the Free University in Brussels, Belgium. She held a research position there until 1987, when she took a position as a member of the technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories. In 1994 she became the first woman ever to hold a tenured professorship in mathematics at Princeton University. That year she was awarded the AMS Leroy P. Steele prize for exposition in 1994 for her book "Ten Lectures on Wavelets." From 1992 to 1997, Professor Daubechies is a fellow of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Founded in 1888 to further mathematical research and scholarship, the 30,000-member AMS 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 everyday life.