Aaron Pixton Receives 2009 AMS-MAA-SIAM Morgan Prize

January 6, 2009

Providence, RI---Aaron Pixton, an undergraduate student at Princeton University who is currently at the University of Cambridge doing Part III of the Mathematical Tripos, is receiving the 2008 AMS-MAA-SIAM Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student. The Morgan Prize is presented annually by the American Mathematical Society, the Mathematical Association of America, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. The prize will be given on Tuesday, January 6, 2009, at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Washington, DC.

According to the prize citation, Pixton is honored for five impressive papers he has written, in addition to his Princeton senior thesis. One of his papers has already appeared in the Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society, two others have been accepted by Forum Mathematicum and the International Journal of Number Theory, and two others have been submitted. "In addition to being creative, Pixton's work spans a remarkable range of topics," the prize citation states. Pixton participated in Research Experience for Undergraduates programs at Cornell University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Minnesota Duluth, and he wrote interesting papers in all three programs. One of his mentors described Pixton's "ability to digest current research papers, to formulate interesting questions ..., and within a week's time, to start solving [them]" as "simply astonishing" and considers Pixton's work as "probably stronger than many Ph.D. dissertations."

The full citation for this prize and additional information can be found in the Prize Booklet. Find out more about AMS prizes at http://www.ams.org/prizes-awards.

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