Samuel P. Ferguson and Thomas C. Hales Receive 2007 Robbins Prize

January 8, 2007

Providence, RI:

Samuel P. Ferguson of the National Security Agency and Thomas C. Hales of the University of Pittsburgh have received the AMS David P. Robbins Prize. The Robbins Prize is given every three years for a paper that reports on novel research in algebra, combinatorics, or discrete mathematics. The prize was awarded on Saturday, January 6, 2007, at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Ferguson and Hales are sharing the prize for the paper

"A proof of the Kepler conjecture," by Thomas C. Hales, Annals of Mathematics, 162 (2005), 1065-1185.

Section 5 of this paper is jointly authored with Ferguson.

"The Kepler conjecture asserts that the densest three-dimensional sphere packing is attained by the cannonball packing," the prize citation says. "This 400-year-old problem, going back to Kepler in 1611, was mentioned as part of Hilbert's 18th problem. The proof of this result is a landmark achievement... The cited paper elegantly describes the main theoretical structure of the proof."

The citation also notes that the proof has generated controversy because the large amount of computation required makes it impossible for any human to check every step of the proof. To address this issue, Hales launched the "Flyspeck" project, whose objective is to construct a "second-generation" proof that is entirely checkable by computer in a formal logic system.

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

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