News Release

AMS Awards Prizes at Annual Meeting

Contact at AMS: Tim Goggins, (401) 455-4110, (401) 331-3842 (fax), tjg@ams.org

January 14, 1999

Providence, RI -- The American Mathematical Society will award a number of prizes at its Annual Meeting, to be held January 13-16, 1999 in San Antonio, Texas. The prizes will be awarded at the Joint Prize Session on Thursday, January 14th.

DEMETRIOUS CHRISTODOULOU, SERGIU KLAINERMAN, both of Princeton University, and THOMAS WOLFF of the California Institute of Technology will receive the 1999 Bocher Prize, which honors research in the mathematical field of analysis. Christodoulou will be recognized for his contributions to the mathematical theory of relativity, Klainerman for his contributions to the theory of nonlinear hyperbolic equations, and Wolff for his contributions to the theory of harmonic analysis.

MICHAEL G. CRANDALL of the University of California, Santa Barbara, will receive a 1999 Leroy P. Steele Prize for a Seminal Contribution to Research for two papers he wrote about viscosity solutions for differential equations. This research has had important ramifications in areas such as control theory, image processing, and phase field models.

RICHARD V. KADISON of the University of Pennsylvania will receive the 1999 Leroy P. Steele for Lifetime Achievement. For almost half a century, Kadison has been one of the world leaders in the field of operator algebras, and the present flourishing of this field is largely due to his efforts. He has written many important papers and books in the subject and has been an inspiration to graduate students and postdoctoral researchers.

SERGE LANG of Yale University will receive the 1999 Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition. Lang has written a number of influential books, ranging from expositions of topics at the forefront of mathematical research to mathematical textbooks at the graduate level. He is also well known for his books on political themes, including his latest one, Challenges, published in 1998.

JOHN NASH will receive a 1999 Leroy P. Steele Prize for a Seminal Contribution for Research. Nash, who received the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in game theory, will be honored for his paper, ``The embedding problem for Riemannian manifolds,'' which appeared in Annals of Mathematics in 1956. This paper solved an old problem in Riemannian geometry and led to a new breakthrough in the mathematical area of analysis.

BERNADETTE PERRIN-RIOU of the University of Paris, Orsay, will receive the 1999 Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize for her research in number theory, in particular for results in p-adic L-functions and Iwasawa theory. These areas of research are at the heart of the work that led to the celebrated solution of Fermat's Last Theorem. The work of Perrin-Riou has had a profound impact on these areas and has shaped the directions in which they are currently moving.