Trjitzinsky Memorial Awards Presented

Providence, RI---The AMS has made awards to nine undergraduate students through the Waldemar J. Trjitzinsky Memorial Fund. The fund is made possible by a bequest from the estate of Waldemar J., Barbara G., and Juliette Trjitzinsky. The will of Barbara Trjitzinsky stipulates that the income from the bequest should be used to establish a fund in honor of the memory of her husband, to assist needy students in mathematics.

For the 2001 awards, the AMS chose eight geographically distributed schools to receive one-time awards of $4,000 each. The mathematics departments at those schools then chose students to receive the funds to assist them in pursuit of careers in mathematics. The schools are selected in a random drawing from the pool of AMS institutional members.

Waldemar J. Trjitzinsky was born in Russia in 1901 and received his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1926. He taught at a number of institutions before taking a position at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he remained for the rest of his professional life. He showed particular concern for students of mathematics and in some cases made personal efforts to insure that financial considerations would not hinder their studies. Trjitzinsky was the author of about sixty mathematics papers, primarily on quasi-analytic functions and partial differential equations. A member of the AMS for 46 years, he died in 1973.

What follows are the names of the selected schools for 2001, the names of the students receiving Trjitzinsky awards, and brief biographical sketches of the students.

Columbia University: Alexander Ivanov Sotirov. Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, Sotirov attended high school there before becoming a student at Columbia University in September 1998. He has taken a variety of undergraduate and graduate mathematics courses and is an outstanding student. He received Columbia's Van Amringe and I. I. Rabi/Kann-Rasmussen Prizes, and is a recipient of a Global Scholarship for international students.

Florida Atlantic University: Gregory Nevil Leuchiali Maxwell. Maxwell is a mathematics major and a participant in a program whereby students earn a bachelor's degree in an area of specialization and then go on to receive an M.Ed. degree. Maxwell was born and raised in Jamaica, and came to the U.S. in 1997, originally intending to study medicine. His experiences teaching mathematics have drawn him to a career in mathematics education. In addition to working as a student assistant in the mathematics department, he has volunteered his time as a tutor at the university and also to help high school students prepare for the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

Henderson State University: Ann Smith. Smith has served as a tutor for the past two years. She is a recipient of one of the departmental scholarships, a member of three honor societies and secretary of the Math Club. She was selected by the dean to serve as the student representative on the General Education Committee.

John Carroll University: Andrea C. Forney. Forney is a mathematics major in her junior year. She finances her education through summer jobs, scholarships, and a federal work/study award. She grades calculus homework for the mathematics department, and is an inductee of Pi Mu Epsilon and will serve as chapter secretary next year.

Seattle University: Sinead Pollom. Born in Seattle, Pollom got interested in mathematics "rather by accident," she said. At first she took mathematics courses because she had to, then as she started to like them, she decided to minor in the subject. Eventually mathematics became her major. She has two other majors, in ecology and German, and a minor in economics, and hopes to pursue a career that involves mathematics.

University of Texas at Austin: Virginia Roberts. Roberts supports her studies by working as a grader and a consultant in the computer laboratory of the mathematics department. In the summer of 1999, she learned about wavelets in order to apply them to remastering music. She was able to remove audience noise from a short recording of a 1961 Miles Davis concert. With support from University of Texas mathematician Karen Uhlenbeck, Roberts presented her results last year at a conference for women in mathematics in Lincoln, Nebraska.

University of Utah: Paul T. Watkins. Originally a German major (he has now completed a baccalaureate in that subject), Watkins is now a double major in mathematics and electrical engineering. This year he earned the best score in the mathematics department on the Putnam Examination and tied for third in the local Calculus Challenge.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute: Yakov Kronrod and Megan Lally. Worcester Polytechnic Institute chose to split the Trjitzinsky award evenly between two students. Yakov Kronrod was born in Russia and moved to the U.S. in 1989. He is currently a junior, majoring in mathematics and computer science. His interests include random number generation and reaction-diffusion equations associated with biological systems. After graduation, he plans to earn a master's degree in computer science and a Ph.D. in mathematics, in preparation for a career in research and teaching. Megan Lally is also a junior and is also majoring in mathematics and computer science. She is interested in cryptography, especially cryptographic algorithms derived from classical mathematics. Her undergraduate major project in mathematics involves studying and simulating patterns in nature using numerical analysis and modeling. A planned future project is studying the Advanced Encryption Standard. After graduation, she plans to obtain a master's degree in computer science.

For further information about the Trjitzinsky Memorial Fund, contact the AMS Development Office at dev@ams.org.

Contact:
Annette Emerson or Mike Breen, Public Awareness Officers
Ameircan Mathematical Society
201 Charles Street
Providence, RI 02906
tel: 401-455-4000; fax: 401-331-3842
Email: pa-office@ams.org

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