News Release

Gromov Receives AMS Steele Prize for
Seminal Contribution to Research

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---Mikhael Gromov has received the AMS Leroy P. Steele Prize for a Seminal Contribution to Research. The prize was awarded on January 9, 1997, during the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego.

This prize was established in 1970 in honor of three prominent figures in the history of mathematics in the U.S.---George David Birkhoff, William Fogg Osgood, and William Casper Graustein---and are endowed under the terms of a bequest from Leroy P. Steele. The Steele Prizes are among the most prestigious awards given for mathematical achievement.

Professor Gromov is receiving the prize for his paper "Pseudo-holomorphic curves in symplectic manifolds" (Inventiones Math. 82 (1985) 307-347). According the to committee selecting him to receive the prize, this paper "revolutionized the subject of symplectic geometry and topology and is central to much current research activity, including quantum cohomology and mirror symmetry." These areas of mathematics, with their deep links to theoretical physics, are producing some of the most exciting developments in the field.

Professor Gromov was born in 1943 in Boksitogorsk, Russia and received his Ph.D. in 1969 and his D.Sc. in 1973 from the University of Leningrad. After holding positions at the University of Leningrad, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and the University of Paris, he moved in 1982 to Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques, where he is a permanent fellow. From 1991 until 1996, he also held the position of Professor of Mathematics at the University of Maryland, College Park. In 1996 he accepted a professorship at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University.

Professor Gromov is the recipient of many of the highest honors in mathematics, including the Moscow Mathematical Society Prize (1971), the AMS Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry (1971), the Elie Cartan Prize of the French Academy of Sciences (1984), the Prix UAP (1989), and the Wolf Prize in Mathematics (1993). He also holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Geneva. He is a foreign member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the French Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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.