News 2008

Mathematics Projects among Siemens Competition Winners

The 2008 Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology award recipients include several students whose research is in mathematics.

Eric K. Larson wins the US $50,000 scholarship in the 2008 Siemens Competition. Photograph courtesy of the Siemens Foundation.

The Siemens Foundation announces the following winners in the Individuals category: * Eric K. Larson of Eugene, OR, was awarded a US$50,000 scholarship for The Classification of Certain Fusion Categories. "The main result of this project identifies and completely classifies a new class of fusion categories which, for the first time, contains non group-theoretic examples." * Nityan Nair of Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, was awarded US$40,000 scholarship for Diffraction with a twist: Forming fractional optical vortices using spiral zone plates. "He found a novel way of formulating the mathematics that describes the focusing of light leading to an easier and inexpensive method to create and study optical vortices." * Ashok Cutkosky of Columbia, MO, was awarded US$20,000 for Associated Primes of the Square of the Alexander Dual of Hypergraphs. "He took an algebraic approach to study hypergraphs and worked to restate geometric properties of multivariable polynomials." * Hayden C. Metsky of Millburn, NJ, was awarded US$10,000 for Improving Statistical Machine Translation Through Template-based Phrase-table Extensions. "His approach addressed a critical problem in machine translation, that of producing good results for phrases that the system has not seen before, which will yield performance improvements to automatic translators through virtual extension of a given sample."

In the Teams category Erika Debenedictis and Duanni (Tony) Huang of Albuquerque, NM, were awarded US$40,000 for Optimizing the Direct Simulation Monte Carlo Algorithm for Multi-Core Processors, and Raphael-Joel (RJ) Lim of Indianapolis, IN, and Mark Zhang of Sugar Land, TX, received US$20,000 for Previously Unknown Parts of the Greene-Kleitman Partition for the Tamari Lattice. (Hear an interview with finalist Lim, "For Teen Math Whiz, Aptitude Has Ups And Downs," on National Public Radio, December 8, 2008.)

The list of all winners in the competition, with biographical information and more details on their projects is at the Siemens website. The Siemens Competition is a program of the Siemens Foundation and is administered by the College Board. [Item posted 12/12/08]

U.S. Math Scores Improve in Latest TIMSS

Results from the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study show U.S. eighth graders scoring better, on average, in math than 37 of the 47 other countries tested, while average math scores of U.S. fourth graders were better than 23 of the other 35 countries. [Item posted 12/11/08]

Enrique R. Pujals to Receive 2008 Ramanujan Prize

Enrique R. Pujals will be awarded the 2008 Ramanujan Prize for young mathematicians from developing countries. Pujals, an associate researcher at the Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada (IMPA) in Brazil is honored for "his outstanding contributions to dynamical systems, especially the characterization of robust dynamics for flows and transformations and the development of a theory of generic systems." The US$15,000 prize is supported by the Niels Henrik Abel Memorial Fund, with the participation of the International Mathematical Union. More information on the prize is available at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics website. [Item posted 12/1/08]

Akshay Venkatesh to Receive 2008 SASTRA Ramanujan Prize

The 2008 SASTRA Ramanujan Prize will be awarded to Akshay Venkatesh, professor of mathematics at Stanford University. Venkatesh is recognized for "far-reaching contributions to a wide variety of areas in mathematics including number theory, automorphic forms, representation theory, locally symmetric spaces and ergodic theory." The US$10,000 prize is for outstanding contributions to areas of mathematics influenced by Srinivasa Ramanujan and will be awarded at the International Conference on Number Theory and Modular Forms, which will take place December 20-22 in Ramanujan's hometown of Kumbakonam. More information on the prize is online. [Item posted 12/1/08]

Graeme Fairweather is new Executive Editor of Mathematical Reviews

Professor Graeme Fairweather from the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) is the new Executive Editor of Mathematical Reviews. Graeme received his B.Sc. and Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and served for fourteen years as head of CSM's mathematical and computer sciences department. Before joining CSM, he held faculty positions at the University of St. Andrews, Rice University, and the University of Kentucky where he was instrumental in establishing the Center for Computational Sciences and served as its associate director for several years. His primary research interests are in numerical analysis and scientific computing. In recent years, he has engaged in several education projects funded by the National Science Foundation. These include the development of an REU program based in Hong Kong, the enhancement of mathematics and science teaching in pre-college education, and broadening the participation of women in computing.

"I am honored to have the opportunity to play a role in the production of MathSciNet. It is a unique product which is highly respected around the world for its accurate and comprehensive contribution to the dissemination of knowledge to the mathematics community."

Kevin Clancey, who has served as Executive Editor since 2004, will return to Georgia for his retirement. [Item posted 11/20/08]

Kiyoshi Itô, 1915-2008

Kiyoshi Itô, a pioneer in probability theory, died on November 10 in Kyoto, Japan, at the age of 93. Itô's work has had a profound influence on the development of probability theory and has been applied across a wide range of areas. His work centers on the study of random processes revolving around Brownian motion, which can be seen in phenomena as varied as the diffusion of pollen in water and the fluctuation of stock prices. During the 1920s, the great mathematician Norbert Wiener showed Einstein's model of Brownian motion existed as a stochastic process, and some of its key features were established. But Wiener was unable to construct a real stochastic integral, which was an obstacle to progress because the classical tools of integration do not work for random processes like Brownian motion. Itô realized a clever opening in the problem and was able to develop a stochastic integral, which proved to be crucial to the study of the mathematics stemming from Brownian motion. His achievement is all the more impressive when one realizes he did this work in the isolation of Japan during World War II and was unaware of many spectacular developments taking place in probability theory, some of which could have facilitated his work.

Itô's techniques proved extremely useful in the study of stochastic differential equations and diffusion equations, leading to widespread applications in biology, electrical engineering, chemical reactions, quantum physics, and other areas. Perhaps the most famous development coming out of the work of Itô has been in finance, namely, the Black-Scholes formula for pricing options. Itô also did important work on Wiener chaos, Lévy processes, and diffusion processes. Kiyoshi Itô was born on September 17, 1915, in Japan. After a position in the Japanese government, he became an assistant professor at Nagoya Imperial University. He obtained his D.Sc. from the Imperial University of Tokyo in 1945. In 1952, he became a professor at Kyoto University, where he remained until his retirement in 1979. He served as director of the Research Institute of Mathematical Sciences at Kyoto University from 1976 to 1979. After retirement from Kyoto University he took a position at Gakushin University and retired from there in 1985. He received some of Japan's highest honors, including the Medal of Culture of Japan, awarded three weeks before his death. He also received the Wolf Prize (1987), the Kyoto Prize (1998), and the Gauss Prize (2006). For more about the work of Itô, see "2006 Gauss Prize" (AMS Notices, November 2006), "The Work of Kiyosi Itô", by Philip Protter (AMS Notices, June/July 2007), and "On the Works of Kiyosi Itô and Stochastic Analysis," by Masatoshi Fukushima, Japanese Journal of Mathematics 2, 45-53 (2007). [Item posted 11/18/08]

Mathematician Analyzes Mysterious Opening Chord in "A Hard Day's Night"

Photo of Jason Brown, and his guitar, by Danny Abriel.

Jason Brown (Dalhousie University) is in the news for his work analyzing the opening chord of the Beatles' song "A Hard Day's Night." The exact nature of the chord, played by George Harrison, was a mystery for 40 years, but Brown used a Fourier transform to analyze the frequencies and solve the mystery. He found an F note in the opening sound that could not be played on Harrison's 12-string guitar and deduced that the note was part of a piano chord played along with the guitar. Brown is also researching other aspects of the Beatles' music, including Harrison's guitar solo in the same song--which he concluded was recorded at half-speed and then sped up in the studio--and whether it was John Lennon or Paul McCartney who wrote "In My Life"--which both artists claimed to have written. On math and music, Brown says, "Music and math are not really that far apart. ... The best music is analytical and pattern-filled and mathematics has a lot of aesthetics to it. They complement each other well." The Halifax Chronicle Herald has more about Brown and his research in its October 28 edition. More on math-related articles appearing in newspapers, magazines, radio, and television is in Math in the Media. [Item posted 10/31/08]

Andrew Gleason, 1921-2008

Gleason, AMS president from 1981 to 1982, died October 17 at the age of 86. He may be best known for his contributions to the solution of Hilbert's Fifth Problem for which he won the Newcomb Cleveland Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1952. After graduating from Yale University in 1942, Gleason served in the U.S. Navy in World War II as a code breaker. He also served in the Korean War. In 1946 Gleason was appointed as a Junior Fellow at Harvard University, and was appointed professor in 1957. In 1969 he was named Hollis Professor of Mathematicks and Natural Philosophy at Harvard. He was the author of Fundamentals of Abstract Analysis and co-authored, with R.E. Greenwood and L.M. Kelly, The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, which contained all the problems and solutions from 1938 to 1964. He retired from Harvard in 1992. In 1996, Gleason received the MAA's Yueh-Gin Gung and Dr. Charles Y. Hu Award for Distinguished Service to Mathematics. About this, H.O. Pollak wrote in the American Mathematical Monthly, "In thinking about, and admiring, Andy Gleason's career, your natural reference is the total profession of a mathematician: designing and teaching courses, advising on education at all levels, doing research, consulting for the users of mathematics, acting as a leader of the profession, cultivating mathematical talent, and serving one's institution. Andy Gleason is that rare individual who has done all of these superbly." The MacTutor biography of Gleason has more information. [Item posted 10/20/08]

2008 Nobel Prize in Physics

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2008 with one half to Yoichiro Nambu (Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, IL, USA) "for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics" and the other half jointly to Makoto Kobayshi (High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), Tsukuba, Japan, and Toshihide Maskawa (Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics (YITP), Kyoto University, Japan, "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature." The prize is SEK 10 million. Nambu receives one half and Kobayashi and Maskawa share the other half.

"The fact that our world does not behave perfectly symmetrically is due to deviations from symmetry at the microscopic level. As early as 1960, Yoichiro Nambu formulated his mathematical description of spontaneous broken symmetry in elementary particle physics. Spontaneous broken symmetry conceals nature's order under an apparently jumbled surface. It has proved to be extremely useful, and Nambu's theories permeate the Standard Model of elementary particle physics. The Model unifies the smallest building blocks of all matter and three of nature's four forces in one single theory." (From the Nobel Prize news release.)

See more information on the Nobel Prize and the work of Nambu, Kobayshi and Maskawa. [Item posted 10/7/08]

45th and 46th Known Mersenne Primes Discovered

Computers at the UCLA Department of Mathematics recently discovered the 45th known Mersenne prime, 2^43,112,609 - 1, a prime with almost 13 million digits, while the 46th known Mersenne prime, 2^37,156,667 - 1, which has over 11 million digits, was discovered later by a computer in Cologne, Germany  (a Mersenne prime is one of the form 2^p -1 , where p is prime). Both discoveries are part of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), a distributed computing project. The larger prime was the first known prime of 10 million digits or more, which earned the UCLA Department of Mathematics a prize of US$50,000 from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Edson Smith, of the UCLA Mathematics Computing Group who installed and maintained the searching software at UCLA, has posted a FAQ about the discovery. GIMPS founder George Woltman says that the project will soon offer a prize of $150,000 for the discovery of the first 100-million digit prime. [Item posed 9/17/08]

NSF Funds New National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis

Emergence of within-group coalitions and alliances is shown in this graphical output of a simulation model. Credit: Sergey Gavrilets, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded US$16 million to the new National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis, or NIMBioS, located at the University of Tennessee (UT) Knoxville. The institute is dedicated to bringing top researchers in biology and mathematics together to find creative solutions to pressing problems in both scientific fields. A unique aspect of NIMBioS will be its partnership with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which will serve as a testing ground for many of the ideas that are generated by the researchers. "We believe this center is poised to be a global hub for mathematical and biological research," said institute director Louis Gross, a mathematician and ecologist at UT Knoxville. The institute expects over 600 reseachers will travel each year to NIMBioS for working groups or conferences. The UT Knoxville news release has more information. [Item posted 9/5/08]

Recent Enhancements to MathSciNet

The following new features have been added to MathSciNet.

• Author Profiles MathSciNet now has a page dedicated to information associated with each MR Author ID number in the database. This information includes, when available, publications and reviews written by the author, a link to the author's Mathematics Genealogy Project listing, citation information for the author, a list of co-authors, and counts of articles published in various subject classifications. There are also links to facilitate a search for additional information about the author. The Author Profile page is accessible from the drop-down menu after an Author search or by clicking on the Author Profile icon after a publications search.
• Librarians' Page A click on the Librarians Tab in the upper right-hand corner of a search page will return a page with links to resources in support of librarian activities, such as up-to-date information about mathematics journals, instructional resources pertaining to MathSciNet, and other resources from the AMS that might be of interest to librarians.
• PDF/HTML preference option A default option to have reviews returned in PDF or HTML format is now available as a preference. This preference may be set by clicking the Preferences tab on any search page or by selecting the desired format on the Publications search page. [Item posted 8/26/08]

2008-2009 AMS Project NExT Fellows

2008-2009 AMS Project NExT Fellows, left to right: Daniel Bates, Christina Eubanks-Turner, Elaine Spiller, Maria Emelianenko, Jeremy Rouse, Jer-Chin Chuang.

The 2008-2009 AMS Project NExT (New Experiences in Teaching) Fellows are listed as follows, with their area of research and affiliation: Daniel Bates (numerical algebraic geometry, applied math), Colorado State University; Jer-Chin Chuang (geometry and topology), Duke University; Maria Emelianenko (applied mathematics), George Mason University; Christina Eubanks-Turner (commutative algebra), University of Louisiana at Lafayette; Jeremy Rouse (number theory), University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and Elaine Spiller (applied math), Marquette University. Project NExT is a program of the Mathematical Association of America, with major funding from The ExxonMobil Foundation. The professional development program for new or recent Ph.D.s in the mathematical sciences addresses all aspects of an academic career: improving the teaching and learning of mathematics, engaging in research and scholarship, and participating in professional activities. It also provides the participants with a network of peers and mentors as they assume these responsibilities. The AMS sponsors six fellows each year. [Item posted 8/20/08]

Henri Cartan, 1904-2008

Henri Cartan, one of the outstanding mathematicians of the twentieth century, died August 13 at the age of 104. Cartan, the son of mathematician Élie Cartan, was one of the founding members of the Bourbaki group and made important contributions to many areas of mathematics, including complex analysis, algebraic topology, and homological algebra. He co-authored Homological Algebra with Samuel Eilenberg and ran the Séminaire Cartan in Paris from 1948 to 1964. Cartan was elected to more than a dozen academies in Europe, the U.S., and Japan, and received the Wolf Prize in 1980. In addition to his work in mathematics, he is also known for his efforts to promote human rights and for restoring relations between mathematicians in France and Germany after World War II. More about Cartan's life and work is in "Interview with Henri Cartan" by Allyn Jackson in the August 1999 issue of Notices. [Item posted 8/19/08]

AMS Executive Director Ewing to Head Math for America

The Board of Trustees of the American Mathematical Society announces that John H. Ewing, who has served as Executive Director of the Society since 1995, will become President of the new national program Math for America in early 2009. During the course of his service for the AMS, Ewing has overseen many changes in the operations and programs of the Society. MathSciNet, born in 1996, underwent many enhancements and the database grew to what now includes over 3 million citations; the Publications program expanded to include several new book series including the AMS Chelsea Publishing, Graduate Studies in Mathematics, Student Mathematical Library, and co-publications with organizations around the world; the Public Awareness Office was created to serve the Society and broader mathematical community; Notices of the AMS transformed into the Society's flagship journal, in print and online; the publication process for AMS books and journals became almost wholly electronic and streamlined; and many programs for the profession were developed, such as the Book & Journal Donation program, authoring tools, Epsilon Fund, and award for Mathematics Programs that Make a Difference. The AMS also saw growth in membership, revenue from publications, and outreach programs. Ewing leaves the Society strong and stable. His interest in bettering mathematics education leads him to Math for America, a nonprofit organization with a mission to improve mathematics education in secondary public schools in the U.S. by recruiting, training, and retaining outstanding mathematics teachers. "I will miss the AMS and my colleagues there," Ewing said, "but I am excited about the opportunity to create a program that could profoundly improve mathematics education."

The Board of Trustees seeks a new Executive Director to carry the Society forward--to oversee the operations of the Society and serve as liaison to the AMS President, policy committees and Board of Trustees. [Item posted 7/23/08] [12/15/08 update: The search for an executive director has ended.]

Geometry at the Olympics

Image ©Arup + Ben McMillan

The designers of the "Water Cube"--the National Aquatics Center in Beijing--where the Olympic swimming and diving events took place, wanted the building to express the spirit of water. They arrived on a motivating theme of foam, represented by gigantic bubbles. The design is modeled on slightly curved dodecahedra and a 14-sided shape made of hexagons and pentagons. The foam shape was discovered by Denis Weaire and Robert Phelan, physicists at Trinity College in Dublin and improves upon Lord Kelvin's foam shape by reducing the surface area by 0.3 percent. Weaire and Phelan have not been able to prove that their shape gives the minimum surface area, though. The design is written about by Julie Rehmeyer in "A Building of Bubbles," in the web edition of the Science News. More on math-related articles appearing in newspapers, magazines, radio, and television is in Math in the Media. [Item posted 7/23/08]

IMO 2008 Results

China finished first in the 2008 International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), which was held in Madrid (Spain). The team from China finished with 217 points, out of a possible 252. Russia finished second, with 199 points. All six members of the Russian team won gold medals. The U.S. team finished third with 190 points. Alex Zhai of the U.S., one of three participants to receive a perfect score, won a gold medal, along with teammates Colin Sandon, Shaunak Kishore, and Krishanu Sankar. The other two members of the U.S. team, Evan O'Dorney and Paul Christiano, each won silver medals. Rounding out the top five teams were Korea with 188 points and Iran with 181 points. All results are online, with links to more information on the competition. Next year's IMO, the 50th, will take place July 10-22 in Bremen, Germany. [Item posted 7/21/08]

EMS Prizes Awarded

The European Mathematical Society (EMS) awarded its prizes, including the Felix Klein Prize, at the 5th European Congress of Mathematics, held this week in Amsterdam (The Netherlands). The EMS prizes are awarded to young researchers not older than 35 years, in recognition of distinguished contributions in mathematics, and are presented every four years at the European Congress of Mathematics. The prizewinners (listed with their current affiliations) are:

• Artur Avila (Clay Mathematics Institute, Université Paris 6, France, and IMPA, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil), for his many important results in dynamical systems, especially in the theory of iterated rational maps and the Teichmuller geodesic flow;
• Alexei Borodin (CalTech), for his substantial contributions to: the representation theory of "big" groups, combinatorics, interacting particle systems, and random matrix theory;
• Ben Green (University of Cambridge, England), for his celebrated result with Terence Tao that there exist arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions of primes;
• Olga Holtz (Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, and University of California, Berkeley), for her substantial contributions to several mathematical areas including algebra, numerical linear algebra, approximation theory, theoretical computer science, and numerical analysis;
• Bo'az Klartag (Clay Mathematics Institute and Princeton University), for his achievements in asymptotic geometric analysis;
• Alexander Kuznetsov (Steklov Mathematical Institute, Moscow, Russia), for his fundamental contributions to birational projective geometry, representation theory, mathematical physics, homological algebra, and noncommutative geometry;
• Assaf Naor (Courant Institute, New York), for his groundbreaking contributions to functional analysis, the theory of algorithms, and combinatorics;
• Laure Saint-Raymond (ENS, Paris), for her outstanding results in nonlinear partial differential equations in the dynamics of gases and plasmas, and also in fluid dynamics;
• Agata Smoktunowicz (University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Institute of Mathematics of the Polish Academy of Sciences), for solving a number of outstanding problems in noncommutative algebra; and
• Cédric Villani (ENS, Lyon, France), for his contributions to the theory of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, in particular in connection with the Boltzmann equation and the Landau equation in plasma physics.

The Felix Klein Prize, awarded to young scientists "for using sophisticated methods to give an outstanding solution to a concrete and difficult industrial problem," is awarded to Josselin Garnier (Université Paris 7, France). Garnier's research is at the interface of stochastics and applied analysis, and is applied to optics, wave propagation and plasma physics. The prize citation notes that Garnier "is a leading scientist dealing with probabilistic aspects in the framework of partial differential equations, and has shown his ability to apply powerful theoretical tools to deal with real industrial problems." Each prizewinner will receive 5,000 Euro. For more information on the prize and prizewinners see the 2008 EMS Prize Booklet and the website of the 5th European Congress of Mathematics. [Item posted 7/15/08]

Meza to Receive 2008 Blackwell-Tapia Prize

The 2008 Blackwell-Tapia Prize will be awarded to Dr. Juan C. Meza, Department Head and Senior Scientist for the High Performance Computing Research Department at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "Meza has an exceptionally distinguished record as a mathematical scientist, an accomplished and effective head of a large department doing cutting-edge explorations in the computational sciences, computational mathematics, and future technologies, and a role model and active advocate for others from groups under-represented in the mathematical sciences. As a mathematician, his current research focuses on nonlinear optimization with an emphasis on methods for parallel computing, and he has also worked on various scientific and engineering applications including scalable methods for nanoscience, power grid reliability, molecular conformation problems, optimal design of chemical vapor deposition furnaces, and semiconductor device modeling. He is a much sought after speaker, both nationally and internationally, on topics ranging from his own research, through major invited talks on the importance of diversity, and advice important to young mathematicians-in-the-making. His record of service to communities under-represented in mathematics extends from serving on high-level advisory committees on diversity for major scientific organizations, through rolling up his own sleeves and working directly with early-career mathematics students from under-represented groups." (From the Prize Committee announcement.) The prize will be presented at the Fifth Blackwell-Tapia Conference, to be hosted by the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute (SAMSI) in Research Triangle Park, NC on November 14–15, 2008.

The Blackwell-Tapia Prize is awarded every second year in honor of the legacy of David H. Blackwell and Richard A. Tapia, two distinguished mathematical scientists who have been inspirations to more than a generation of African American, Latino/Latina, and Native American students and professionals in the mathematical sciences. It recognizes a mathematical scientist who has contributed and continues to contribute significantly to research in his or her field of expertise, and who has served as a role model for mathematical scientists and students from under-represented minority groups or contributed in other significant ways to addressing the problem of the under-representation of minorities in mathematics. [Item posted 7/10/08]

NIST Releases Preview of Online Mathematics Reference

Visual representation of a Hankel function for complex variables, courtesy of NIST.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released a five-chapter preview of the online Digital Library of Mathematical Functions (DLMF). The full DLMF is designed to be a modern successor to the 1964 Handbook of Mathematical Functions. The preview is a fully functional beta-level release of 5 of the 36 chapters. The DLMF is designed to be the definitive reference work on the functions of applied mathematics that occur very frequently in mathematical modeling of physical phenomena, providing precise definitions, alternate representations, illustrations of how the functions behave, and relationships between functions. The DLMF also provides various visual aids, including interactive Web-based tools for rotating and zooming in on three-dimensional representations. The complete DLMF, with 31 additional chapters providing information on mathematical functions (from Airy to Zeta), is expected to be released in early 2009. [Item posted 6/26/08]

Bierstone Appointed Next Fields Institute Director

Edward Bierstone (University of Toronto) has been appointed Director of the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences, beginning July 2009. Bierstone, who received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University, has made important contributions in the areas of singularity theory, analytic geometry and differential analysis. "The wide scope of Ed's interests in mathematical sciences places him in a superb position to direct Fields," says Board of Directors Chair John Gardner. "We look forward to working more with him." The Fields Institute, located in Toronto, attracts over 1,000 visitors annually to collaborate on leading-edge research programs in the mathematical sciences. A press release issued by the Institute has more information. (Photo of Ed Bierstone courtesy of the Fields Institute.) [Item posted 6/25/08]

Karp Wins 2008 Kyoto Prize

Richard M. Karp (University of California, Berkeley) has won the Inamori Foundation's 2008 Kyoto Prize for "his fundamental contributions to the development of the theory of computational complexity." Karp established the theory of NP-completeness in the 1970s and has developed many algorithms, including the Edmonds-Karp algorithm, which is used to compute the maximum flow in a network. He received his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Harvard University in 1959. Karp was awarded the AMS Delbert Ray Fulkerson Prize in 1979 and the National Medal of Science in 1996. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The prize, worth almost US$500,000, will be awarded in November. More information on Karp and the prize is at the Inamori Foundation website. (Photo courtesy of the Inamori Foundation.) [Item posted 6/24/08]

Puzzles Based on Sporadic Simple Groups

Igor Kriz (University of Michigan at Ann Arbor) and Paul Siegel (Pennsylvania State University) describe some mathematical puzzles that they've created in the article "Simple Groups at Play" in the July issue of Scientific American. According to the article, Kriz and Siegel felt the need to go beyond Rubik's Cube, which gives puzzle-solvers an intuition into group theory, and provide puzzlers some insight into sporadic simple groups. The puzzles can be played online at the Scientific American website. More on math-related articles appearing in newspapers, magazines, radio, and television is in Math in the Media. (M24 puzzle image courtesy of Igor Kriz.) [Item posted 6/23/08]

First MRC Conference in Snowbird

The inaugural Mathematics Research Communities (MRC) summer conference, Teichmüller Theory and Low-Dimensional Topology, concludes today at the Snowbird Resort in Utah. The week-long conference, organized by Francis Bonahon (University of Southern California), Howard Masur (University of Illinois at Chicago), Abigail Thompson (University of California, Davis) and Genevieve Walsh (Tufts University), drew 39 early-career mathematicians. The MRC summer conferences are funded by the National Science Foundation, for an initial period of three years. Each conference is the first event in a program that will include special sessions at the Joint Mathematics Meetings, a longitudinal study, and a continuation of the connections and collaborations via an electronic network. Read more about the Society's MRC program in "Building a Research Career: Mathematics Research Communities," by Allyn Jackson (Notices of the AMS, February 2008, p. 247). The next two conferences are "Scientific Computing and Advanced Computation" and "Computational Algebra and Convexity," June 21–27, 2008. [Item posted 6/20/08]

Future Directions for DOE Applied Math

An independent panel has released a report on possible future directions for the U.S. Department of Energy program in applied math. The report is based on the work of a committee chaired by David Brown.  Committee members included John Bell, Donald Estep, William Gropp, Bruce Hendrickson, Sallie Keller-McNulty, David Keyes, J. Tinsley Oden, Linda Petzold, and Margaret Wright. The web page, hosted by SIAM, links to the report and allows readers to submit comments. (Image: Flow pattern produced by cylindrical shock wave, Bill Henshaw, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.) [Item posted 6/17/08]

US 2008 IMO Team

The six members of the U.S. team who will compete in the 2008 International Mathematical Olympiad are:

• Paul Christiano, The Harker School, Saratoga, CA
• Shaunak Kishore, Unionville-Chaddsford High School, West Chester, PA
• Evan O'Dorney, Berkeley Math Circle, Danville, CA
• Colin Sandon, Essex High School, Essex Junction, VT
• Krishanu Sankar, Horace Mann High School, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY and
• Alex Zhai, University Laboratory High School, Urbana, IL.

Five of the team members are graduating seniors; Evan O'Dorney will be a tenth grader this fall. Of the five seniors, four will attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one, Alex Zhai, will attend Harvard University. The IMO takes place in Madrid, Spain July 10-22. More information about the U.S. team members and more about the 2008 IMO is online. [Item posed 6/17/08]

2008 Menger Awards

The 2008 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) was held May 11-16 in Atlanta, GA. Student finalists qualified by winning local, regional, and state fairs in the U.S. or national science fairs abroad. ISEF, federal agencies and professional and educational organizations, including the AMS, participated by giving special awards. Prizes awarded by the AMS included cash, certificates, books, and tote bags. For the AMS, judges reviewed all of the individual and team projects in mathematics and interviewed each student under consideration for a Karl Menger Memorial Award. The 2008 Menger Award winners are as follows:

Pictured in the photo, left to right: Menger Prize Committee Chair David Scott of the University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA, Alex Chen, Shravani Mikkilineni, Alexander Churchill, Matthew Wage, Paul Kominers, David Rosengarten, and Eric Larson.

First Award of US$1,000 to Alexander Lee Churchill, 18, Lincoln East High School, Lincoln, NE, for "Restrictions and Generalizations on Comma-Free Codes." Second Award of US$500 to Shravani Mikkilineni, 17, Detroit Country Day School, Beverly Hills, MI, for "Continued Fractions and Orbits of a Linear Fractional Transformation" and to David Alex Rosengarten, 18, John L. Miller Great Neck North High School, Great Neck, NY, for "Rotation Curves in Five Dimensions." Third Award of US$250 to Eric Kerner Larson, 16, South Eugene High School, Eugene, OR, for "The DNA Inequality in Non-Convex Regions," Alex Hao Chen, 17, York High School, Yorktown, VA, for "On the Reducible Quintic Complete Base Polynomials," Paul Myer Kominers, 17, Walt Whitman High School, Bethesda, MD, for "Chip-Firing Analysis of Stabilization Behaviors, Hitting Times, and Candy-Passing Games," and Matthew Michael Wage, 18, Appleton East High School, Appleton, WI, for "On Lehmer-Type Questions for Special Classes of Arithmetic Functions."

Honorable Mention Awards to Swara Satya Kopparty, 17, Terre Haute South Vigo High School, Terre Haute, IN, for "Frequency Sequences: Structure and Properties," Sana Raoof, 17, Jericho High School, Jericho, NY, for "Computation of the Alexander-Conway Polynomial on the Chord Diagrams of Singular Knots," Nurlan Taiganov, 16, High School, Ekibastuz, Pavlodar, Kazakhstan, for "Problem of Ramsey Theory," Artem A. Timoshenko, 16, Murmansk Polytechnic Lyceum, Murmansk, Russia, for "Analogue of the Popoviciu's Inequality," and Sarah Lee Sellers, 17, Hedgesville High School, Hedgesville, WV, for "Eisenstein Prime Magic Square." [Item posted 6/13/08]

IMU Releases Citation Statistics Report

Citation Statistics is a report from the International Mathematical Union (IMU), in cooperation with the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS), that analyzes the use of citation-based statistics to assess research. Read the press release. [Item posted 6/11/08]

Arnold and Faddeev Win Shaw Prize

Vladimir Arnold, Chief Scientist of the Steklov Mathematical Institute in Moscow, and Ludwig Faddeev, Director of the Euler International Mathematical Institute, Petersburg Department of the Steklov Institute of Mathematics, St. Petersburg, will share the US$1,000,000 2008 Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences "for their widespread and influential contributions to mathematical physics." Arnold, together with Andrei Kolmogorov and Jurgen Moser, has made fundamental contributions to the study of stability in dynamical systems. Faddeev has made many important contributions to quantum physics, including work in which he and Boris Popov showed how to quantize non-Abelian gauge theories. The Shaw Prize is an international award to honor individuals who are active in their field and who have achieved distinguished and significant advances. Previous recipients of the Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences are Robert Langlands and Richard Taylor (2007), David Mumford and Wen-Tsun Wu (2006), Andrew Wiles (2005), and Shiing-Shen Chern (2004). Further information and complete citations for Arnold and Faddeev are available on the Shaw Prize web site. [Item posted 6/10/08]

McCarthy Named AWM Executive Director

The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) has named Maeve Lewis McCarthy as its executive director. McCarthy is a native of Ireland who received her B.Sc. in mathematical physics and her M.Sc. in mathematical sciences from the National University of Ireland, Galway. After moving to Houston to attend Rice University, McCarthy earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in computational and applied mathematics at Rice. Following a year at the University of South Florida, McCarthy joined the department at Murray State University, where she has just been promoted to professor. She will continue to work from Murray, while serving as AWM executive director. She says, "I hope I can be as good for AWM as AWM has been for me." Read more about McCarthy at the AWM website. (Photo courtesy of Maeve Lewis McCarthy.) [Item posted 6/10/08]

Math Project Wins Intel Young Scientist Awards

Sana Raoof, 17, of Jericho High School in Jericho, NY, is among three recipients of the 2008 Intel Young Scientist Award, for her mathematics project, Computation of the Alexander-Conway Polynomial on the Chord Diagrams of Singular Knots. She received a US$50,000 scholarship from the Intel Foundation as part of the award during the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) held in Atlanta May 11-16. "Raoof's research provided new insight into how a better understanding of mathematical knot theory could help resolve classic biochemical problems. Specifically, her work focused on the Alexander-Conway polynomial invariant for chord diagrams to help prove how to classify molecules on a structural basis." (Intel Foundation press release.) She will attend Harvard University this fall. Raoof also received the Intel ISEF Best of Category-Mathematics Award of $5,000 and an Intel Centrino Duo Mobile technology-based notebook computer, and a First Award of $3,000. A $1,000 grant will be given to her school and the Intel ISEF Affiliated Fair she represented. See all the award winners in mathematics. (Photo: Intel Corporation.) [Item posted 5/27/08]

National Academy of Sciences Elects New Members

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has announced the election of 72 new members and 18 foreign associates. Those elected in the mathematical sciences are:

• Emily A. Carter, Princeton University
• Helmut Hofer, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University
• Peter Wilcox Jones, Yale University
• Frank T. Leighton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Thomas M. Liggett, University of California, Los Angeles
• Nathan Seiberg, Institute for Advanced Study
• Terence C. Tao, University of California, Los Angeles

Established in 1863, the NAS is an honorific society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. An NAS press release has a list of all those elected. [Item posted 4/29/08]

American Academy of Arts & Sciences Elects New Fellows

The American Academy of Arts & Sciences has announced its 2008 election of new Fellows. The 190 new Fellows include the following people from the mathematical sciences:

• Alexander A. Beilinson, University of Chicago
• Ruzena Bajcsy, University of California, Berkeley
• Emily Ann Carter, Princeton University
• Sun-Yung Alice Chang, Princeton University
• Tobias Colding, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Vladimir Drinfeld, University of Chicago
• David Gottlieb, Brown University
• John M. Guckenheimer, Cornell University
• Richard H. Herman, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• David Kazhdan, Hebrew University/Harvard University
• John Tinsley Oden, University of Texas at Austin
• James Harris Simons, Renaissance Technologies
• Charles Simonyi, Intentional Software Corporation

The induction ceremony for this year's class, which also includes U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and guitarist B.B. King, will take place October 11 at the Academy's headquarters in Cambridge, MA. The Academy of Arts & Sciences is an independent policy research center founded in 1780. The full list of the new Fellows and Foreign Honorary Members is in an Academy news release. [Item posted 4/29/08]

Donaldson Wins 2008 Nemmers Prize

Photo: Imperial College London

Simon Donaldson, Royal Society Research Professor at Imperial College London, has been awarded the 2008 Frederic Esser Nemmers Prize in Mathematics for his "groundbreaking work in four-dimensional topology, symplectic geometry and gauge theory, and for his remarkable use of ideas from physics to advance pure mathematics." The prize carries with it a US$150,000 stipend. John Franks, AMS treasurer and chair of the mathematics department at Northwestern University, said that Donaldson's work "has provided the seminal steps for the work of others in the study of four-manifolds." Donaldson has also received the Fields Medal (1986), the Royal Society's Royal Medal (1992), the Crafoord Prize (1992), and the King Faisal Prize (2006). Paul R. Milgrom will receive this year's Nemmer Prize in Economics. First awarded in 1994, the Nemmers Prizes recognize "work of lasting significance" and are made possible by a bequest to Northwestern University by brothers Erwin E. and Frederic E. Nemmers. A Northwestern University press release has more information on the Nemmers Prizes and the winners. [Item posted 4/23/08]

Mathematical Sciences in the FY 2009 Budget

"Mathematical Sciences in the FY 2009 Budget," by Samuel M. Rankin, III, director of the AMS office in Washington D.C., analyzes the federal support for mathematical sciences research in 2009.

Highlights of the report:

• Federal support for the mathematical sciences is slated to grow from an estimated $477 million in FY 2008 to an estimated $528 million in FY 2009, an increase of 10.7 percent.
• The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS) budget would increase by 16.0 percent to $245.70 million.
• The aggregate funding for the mathematical sciences in the Department of Defense (DOD) agencies Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), Army Research Office (ARO), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), National Security Agency (NSA), and Office of Naval Research (ONR) would increase by 9.5 percent.
• Aggregate funding for the mathematical sciences in the Department of Energy (DOE) would increase by 9.4 percent to $95.3 million.

[Item posted 4/23/08]

Tao Receives 2008 NSF Waterman Award

Photo: UCLA

Terence Tao, a professor of mathematics at the University of California at Los Angeles, will receive the 2008 Alan T. Waterman Award from the National Science Foundation. The award carries a US$500,000 grant for a three-year period. Tao's work has had a tremendous impact across several mathematical areas. In addition to receiving a Fields Medal in 2006, and a MacArthur "genius grant" that same year, he was a co-recipient of the 2002 AMS Bôcher Prize and the 2005 AMS Conant Prize. The annual Waterman Award recognizes an outstanding young researcher in any field of science or engineering supported by the NSF. Tao will receive the award at a black tie dinner program at the U.S. Department of State on May 6. The NSF has posted a news release about the award. [Item posted 4/10/08]

Inaugural Conant Lecture by Jeffrey Weeks at WPI Is Online

Photo of Jeffrey Weeks, courtesy of WPI.

The first Levi L. Conant Lecture, "The Shape of Space," sponsored by Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), is now online. The lecture is given by 2007 Levi L. Conant Prize winner Jeffrey Weeks and takes viewers on a tour of several possible shapes of space. Weeks received the Conant Prize for his article, "The Poincaré Dodecahedral Space and the Mystery of the Missing Fluctuations," which was published in the June/July 2004 issue of Notices of the AMS. Beginning with Weeks, subsequent Conant Prize winners will be invited to give a lecture at WPI. Conant was head of WPI's mathematics department from 1908 until his death in 1916, and served as the Institute's interim president from 1911 to 1913. [Item posted 4/2/08]

Thompson and Tits Win 2008 Abel Prize

Photo: Thompson (left, © University of Florida) and Tits (right, Jean-François Dars/CNRS Images).

John Griggs Thompson, Graduate Research Professor, University of Florida, and Jacques Tits, Professor Emeritus, Collège de France, have been awarded the 2008 Abel Prize "for their profound achievements in algebra and in particular for shaping modern group theory." In the prize citation, the Abel Committee writes that "Thompson revolutionized the theory of finite groups by proving extraordinarily deep theorems that laid the foundation for the complete classification of finite simple groups, one of the greatest achievements of twentieth century mathematics." In 1963, Thompson and Walter Feit proved that all nonabelian finite simple groups were of even order, work for which they both won the Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Algebra from the AMS in 1965. Thompson also won a Fields Medal in 1970. In the Abel citation for Tits, the committee writes that "Tits created a new and highly influential vision of groups as geometric objects. He introduced what is now known as a Tits building, which encodes in geometric terms the algebraic structure of linear groups." The committee noted the link between the two winners' work: "Tits’s geometric approach was essential in the study and realization of the sporadic groups, including the Monster." Tits received the Grand Prix of the French Academy of Sciences in 1976, and the Wolf Prize in Mathematics in 1993. The Abel Prize is awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters for outstanding scientific work in the field of mathematics. The prize amount is 6,000,000 Norwegian kroner (over US$1,000,000). Thompson and Tits will receive their prize in a ceremony in Oslo on May 20, 2008. See the Abel Prize website for more information about the laureates, their work, and the prize.

The work of Thompson and Tits is one of the outstanding accomplishments of modern mathematics. The American Mathematical Society extends its warm congratulations to them on their award of the 2008 Abel Prize. --- James Glimm, AMS President

I send my heartiest congratulations to two giants of modern mathematics, John Thompson and Jacques Tits. One cannot imagine two more deserving recipients of the Abel Prize. Their contributions have provided the direction for much of recent research in algebra. As President-elect of the American Mathematical Society, I note with special satisfaction that the award to John Thompson highlights the dedication to excellence in U.S. mathematics, in this instance at the University of Florida. This is a great day for mathematics. Congratulations again to Thompson and Tits.
--- George Andrews, AMS President-elect

Articles of related interest include: "What is a Building?" by Kenneth Brown (Notices of the AMS, November 2002) and "What is The Monster?" by Richard Borcherds (Notices of the AMS, October 2002). [Item posted 3/27/08]

2007 Putnam Results

Below are the team and individual winners of the 68th William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, held last December 1. The mathematics department of the first-place team, Harvard University, receives US$25,000, and each Harvard team member receives $1000. Team winners, in order, with team members in alphabetical order, are:

• Harvard University (Zachary Abel, Tiankai Liu, and Alison B. Miller)
• Princeton University (Andrei Negut, Aaron C. Pixton, and Andrei B. Ungureanu)
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Hansheng Diao, Eric C. Price, and Yufei Zhao)
• Stanford University (Serin Hong, Nathan K. Pflueger, and Kian Chuan Tan)
• Duke University (Tirasan Khandhawit, Peng Shi, and Lingren Zhang)

The Putnam Fellows, the top six individual scorers, each receive $2500. They are, in alphabetical order:

• Jason C. Bland (California Institute of Technology)
• Brian R. Lawrence (California Institute of Technology)
• Aaron C. Pixton (Princeton University)
• Qingchun Ren (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
• Xuancheng Shao (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
• Arnav Tripathy (Harvard University)

Alison B. Miller, of the first-place Harvard team, is the winner of the Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize, which is awarded to a woman whose performance on the exam is "particularly meritorious," and has a cash award of $1000. This is the third time she has won the prize. The Putnam Competition is for North American undergraduates and is administered by the Mathematical Association of America. More than 3700 students from more than 500 colleges participated in the competition. Problems, solutions, and results from the 2007 exam and from previous exams, are online. [Item posted 3/19/08]

Breakthrough in the Study of L-functions

On March 12, a new mathematical object was revealed during a lecture at the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM). Two researchers from the University of Bristol exhibited the first example of a generic automorphic cusp form for the general linear group of 3 by 3 matrices and its corresponding degree 3 L-function. These L-functions encode deep underlying connections between many different areas of mathematics. The Riemann zeta function, which is an L-function, is at the heart of the Riemann Hypothesis (RH), one of the outstanding open problems in mathematics. RH should be true for every L-function, not just the Riemann zeta function, and during the workshop researchers made preliminary checks that the new L-function satisfies RH. The new L-function was found by Andrew Booker and his student Ce Bian and has generated excitement among number theorists. "The numerical calculation done by Booker and Bian is quite striking," said Peter Sarnak of Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. "I had no idea that it would be feasible. This kind of number-theoretic computation does not just involve using some faster available codes and then number crunch. Rather it demands a deep mastery of the underlying mathematics and then invention of fast techniques and algorithms." Read more about the result on the AIM website. [Item posted 3/14/08]

2008 Intel Science Talent Search Awards

Two projects involving mathematics finished in the top 10 in the national Intel Science Talent Search. Katherine Rose Banks of Brooklyn, NY finished in fourth place and won a US$25,000 scholarship for her proof of a conjecture that a convex lattice polygon with nine vertices cannot have exactly eight or nine interior lattice points. Banks, a student at Stuyvesant High School, hopes to teach math following her studies at MIT or Cornell University. Philip Mocz of Mililani, HI finished eighth and won a $20,000 scholarship for developing a novel statistical algorithm that he used to discover previously unidentified patterns in the distribution of nearby stars. Mocz, a former contestant in Who Wants to Be a Mathematician, plans to study astronomy, physics, and math in college. The top prize in the competition, a $100,000 scholarship, was won by Shivani Sud of Durham, NC for her research project on colon cancer. The Intel Science Talent Search is owned and administered by the Society for Science & the Public (formerly Science Service) and is sponsored by Intel. Former awardees include six Nobel Prize winners and two Fields Medalists. [Item posted 3/14/08]

Katherine Rose Banks

Philip Mocz

Jim Simons Makes $60-million Gift to Launch New Stony Brook Center

(left to right) Stony Brook President Shirley Strum Kenny, Governor Spitzer, Stony Brook Council member Richard Nasti, Marilyn and Jim Simons. Photo: Sam Levitan/Stony Brook University.

Jim Simons, the prominent financier and mathematician, and his wife Marilyn, who is president of the Simons Foundation, have announced that the Foundation is donating US$60 million to Stony Brook University. The gift will be used to construct and then endow the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics on Stony Brook's main campus on Long Island. In addition to funding the building's construction, the gift will be used to recruit and retain faculty, provide training and support for graduate students, support research programs, secure visiting scholars---up to 30 at a time---and sponsor workshops and conferences, among other initiatives. The gift was announced at a press conference on February 27, at which New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer presented the keynote speech. This is the largest gift ever presented to any of the 64 institutions in the State University of New York system. Further details are available in a news release on the Stony Brook University web site. [Item posted 2/28/08]

AMS Epsilon Fund Makes 2008 Awards

The AMS has chosen eight summer mathematics programs to receive Epsilon grants for 2008: All Girls/All Math, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Gwendolyn Hines, director; Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics (HCSSiM), Hampshire College, Amherst, MA, David C. Kelly, director; MathPath, University of Vermont, Burlington, George R. Thomas and Stephen Maurer, directors; Michigan Math and Science Scholars Summer Program, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Stephen Debacker and Patrick Nelson, directors; PROMYS, Boston University, Boston, MA, Glenn Stevens, director; PROTaSM (Puerto Rico Opportunities for Talented Students in Mathematics, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, Luis F. Caceres, director; Ross Mathematics Program, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, Daniel B. Shaprio, director; and Texas State University Honors Summer Math Camp, Texas State University, San Marcos, Max Warshauer, director. [Item posted 2/28/08]

MathSciNet Links to Mathematics Genealogy Project

MathSciNet now offers direct linking to the Mathematics Genealogy Project (MGP) through its "Authors" search tab. The results obtained after doing an author search on this page include a drop-down menu (hover the cursor over the author of interest) that includes a link to the author's MGP page. Here users may find information about that author: name of the university which awarded his or her degree, the year in which the degree was awarded, the complete title of the dissertation, the name(s) of the advisor(s), and for some, a list of the mathematician's students. [Item posted 2/27/08]

Math Professor Wins Grammy

Kevin Short, professor of mathematics at UNH. Credit: Douglas Prince, UNH Photo Services.

Mathematician Kevin Short (University of New Hampshire) used his Chaotic Compression Technology to restore a bootleg wire recording of a Woody Guthrie concert that is the only known recording of the folk singer performing before a live audience. His work earned him and the team of producers and engineers the 2008 Grammy Award for Best Historical Album: "The Live Wire - Woody Guthrie In Performance 1949," Nora Guthrie and Jorge Arévalo Mateus, compilation producers; Jamie Howarth, Steve Rosenthal, Warren Russell-Smith & Dr. Kevin Short, mastering engineers, [Woody Guthrie Publications]. Hear an interview with Short and samples of the recording before and after the restoration on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation ("And the Grammy Goes to--a Mathematician?", February 22, 2008). [Item posted 2/11/08, updated 2/25/08]

Math and Voting in Newsweek

In the February 4 issue of Newsweek, Sharon Begley's "On Science" column is about mathematics and voting. She quotes voting method experts Don Saari (University of California, Irvine) and Steven Brams (New York University), and gives an example of voting preferences to show how the most common voting method, the plurality method, often fails to reflect voters' wishes. See a more detailed summary of this article (and others involving mathematics) in this month's Math in the Media. The theme of this year's Mathematics Awareness Month (April) is "Mathematics and Voting." Test three methods by voting on ballots listing eight of the Democratic and Republican candidates (not all of whom are still campaigning) at the Mathematics Awareness Month website. [Item posted 2/1/08]

Deligne, Griffiths, and Mumford Share 2008 Wolf Prize

Pierre Deligne and Phillip Griffiths, both of the Institute for Advanced Study, and David Mumford of Brown University, will share the 2008 Wolf Foundation Prize in Mathematics. Deligne was honored "for his work on mixed Hodge theory, the Weil conjectures, the Riemann-Hilbert correspondence, and for his contributions to arithmetic," Griffiths "for his work on variations of Hodge structures; the theory of periods of abelian integrals; and for his contributions to complex differential geometry," and Mumford "for his work on algebraic surfaces; on geometric invariant theory; and for laying the foundations of the modern algebraic theory of moduli of curves and theta functions." The three will share the US$100,000 award. More information about the prize is on the Wolf Foundation website. [Item posted 1/22/08]

Kontsevich and Witten Receive 2008 Crafoord Prize

A press release from the Academy stated that Kontsevich and Witten "have used the methodology of physics to develop a revolutionary new mathematics intended for the study of various types of geometrical objects. Their work is not only of great interest in the discipline of mathematics but may also find applications in totally different areas. Its results are of considerable value for physics and research into the fundamental laws of nature. According to string theory, which is an ambitious attempt to formulate a theory for all the natural forces, the smallest particles of which the Universe is composed are vibrating strings. This theory predicts the existence of additional dimensions and requires very advanced mathematics. The laureates have resolved several important mathematical problems related to string theory and have in this way paved the way for its further development." The Academy has also put on the web a popular article describing their work. [Item posted 1/17/08]

Recent AMS Press Releases

News Archive 2007

News Archive 2006

News Archive 2005

News Archive 2004

News Archive 2003

News Archive 2002

News Archive 2001

News Archive Prior to 2001