News 2009

Hard Problems and Between the Folds Airing on PBS

Hard Problems: The Road to the Toughest Math Contest, a film by George Paul Csicsery, is airing on PBS television stations around the U.S. from October 2009 through October 2013. The documentary follows the six exceptional high school students who represented the United States in 2006 at the world's toughest math competition--the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO). "Each year, the grueling and exhilarating contest pits the top teams from 90 countries against one another. In their quest to solve some of the most challenging problems, these dedicated and talented young men and women—some immigrants, others U.S.-born—shatter many stereotypes and clichés about the mathematically gifted. Hard Problems provides an insightful and thoughtful look at the process that produces and nurtures successful Olympiad teams, and ultimately, the great mathematicians of the future." Learn more about the film, read the synopsis, and track the schedule of the film's airdates.

Between the Folds, a film by Vanessa Gould, will premiere December 8 on PBS's Independent Lens and will be shown starting in November at special events throughout the U.S. "Think origami is just paper planes and cranes? Meet a determined group of theoretical scientists and fine artists who have abandoned careers and scoffed at graduate degrees to forge new lives as modern-day paper folders. Together they reinterpret the world in paper, creating a wild mix of sensibilities towards art, science, creativity and meaning." See information on Independent Lens and the schedule of showings at special events, and link to your local PBS station to see airing dates. [Item posted 10/27/09]

Rudolf Kalman Receives National Medal of Science

Rudolf Kalman, a professor emeritus at the University of Florida and the Eidgenössisches Technische Hochschule in Zurich, received the 2008 National Medal of Science in a ceremony at the White House. The medal is the highest honor the United States gives for achievement in science. Kalman is best known for the Kalman filter, a mathematical technique used to filter out noise from a stream of data. Since its formulation in the early 1960s, the Kalman filter revolutionized control theory and has been used in a wide variety of engineering applications, such as space exploration, missile trajectory evaluation, geophysics exploration, hydraulics, and economics. A brief biography of Kalman is available on the National Academy of Engineering web site. A news release from the National Science Foundation is also available. Photograph: President Obama presenting the award to Kalman on October 7, 2009. Photo by Ryan K Morris/National Science & Technology Medals Foundation. [Item posted 10/13/09]

I.M. Gelfand, 1913-2009

Photo by Tatiana Gelfand.

Israil Moiseevich Gelfand, one of the most influential mathematicians of the 20th century, died October 5 at the age of 96. He was the author of more than 800 articles and 30 books in many areas of mathematics--including commutative normed rings, representation theory, generalized functions, and partial differential equations--and in theoretical biology. Gelfand was born in the Ukraine and received his Ph.D. in 1935 from Moscow State University under the direction of Andrei Kolmogorov. Five years later he received his D.Sc., also from Moscow State University. He was professor at Moscow State University from 1941 until 1990 at which time Gelfand joined the faculty at Rutgers University. During his lifetime he received many awards, among them the State Prize of the USSR (1953), the Lenin Prize (1956), the Wolf Prize (1978), the Kyoto Prize (1989), and a MacArthur Fellowship (1994). In 2005 he received the Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the AMS for his "profound influence on many fields of research through his own work and through his interactions with other mathematicians, including students." In his response, Gelfand wrote, "Mathematics for me is a universal and adequate language of sciences, and it is an example of how people of different cultures and backgrounds can communicate and work together. This is extremely important in our times." Read more about Gelfand's work in the 2005 Steele Prize citation (pdf) in the April 2005 Notices (pages 441-442) and in his MacTutor biography. [Item posted 10/6/09]

Bringmann to Receive 2009 SASTRA Ramanujan Prize

The 2009 SASTRA Ramanujan Prize will be awarded to Professor Kathrin Bringmann of the University of Cologne (Germany) and the University of Minnesota. Professor Krishnaswami Alladi, chair of the prize committee, said, "This year's prize winner Kathrin Bringmann has done spectacular work in an area that is most closely associated with Ramanujan, namely the mock theta functions, and in collaboration with Ken Ono has made major strides towards resolving Freeman Dyson's great challenge regarding the mock theta functions." The $10,000 prize will be awarded on Dec 22, during an International Conference on Number Theory at SASTRA University in Kumbakonam, India, Ramanujan's hometown. Earlier this year, Bringmann won the one million Euro Krupp Prize from the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation. The SASTRA Ramanujan Prize, established in 2005, is awarded to mathematicians no more than age 32 who have made outstanding contributions to areas of mathematics influenced by Srinivasa Ramanujan. Read more about Bringmann's research in the prize press release. (Image courtesy of Kathrin Bringmann.) [Item posted 9/29/09]

Mahadevan Named 2009 MacArthur Fellow

L. Mahadevan, De Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics at Harvard University, has been named a 2009 MacArthur Fellow. Mahadevan uses mathematics to investigate simple-sounding, but complex, questions across the physical and biological sciences, such as how skin wrinkles and how Venus flytraps snap closed. His theoretical and experimental investigations are linked by an effort to discover the geometric and mechanical principles that determine the behavior of complex biological and physical systems. The MacArthur Foundation has posted more information about Mahadevan's work, including a video of him discussing his research. You can also hear Mahadevan on NPR's All Things Considered (broadcast 9/22/09). Mahadevan is one of twenty-four 2009 MacArthur Fellows, each of whom will receive US$500,000 over the next five years. Commonly referred to as the "MacArthur genius award," the unrestricted fellowships are given "to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction." [Item posted 9/22/09]

Wigderson to Give Conant Lecture at WPI

Delbert Ray Fulkerson Prize

The Fulkerson Prize for outstanding papers in the area of discrete mathematics is sponsored jointly by the Mathematical Programming Society (MPS) and the AMS, and presented at each (triennial) International Symposium of the MPS. Originally, the prizes were paid out of a memorial fund administered by the AMS that was established by friends of the late Delbert Ray Fulkerson to encourage mathematical excellence in the fields of research exemplified by his work. The prizes are now funded by an endowment administered by MPS. The eleventh award, 2009, is given to the following individuals (followed by comments from the MPS announcement):

• Maria Chudnovsky, Neil Robertson, Paul Seymour, and Robin Thomas, for "The strong perfect graph theorem", Annals of Mathematics, 164 (2006) 51-229. "This paper contains the proof of Berge's Perfect Graph Conjecture. This is a particularly fitting result for a Fulkerson Prize, since Fulkerson himself established important connections between perfect graphs and mathematical programming."
• Daniel A. Spielman and Shang-Hua Teng, for "Smoothed analysis of algorithms: Why the simplex algorithm usually takes polynomial time", Journal of ACM 51 (2004) 385-463. "The complexity topic of smoothed analysis introduced in this paper has now been applied to many other classes of problems. The LP-specific techniques used by Spielman and Teng have interesting interpretations regarding the Hirsh Conjecture and they provide new insights into the good behavior of the simplex algorithm."
• jointly to Thomas C. Hales, for "A proof of the Kepler conjecture", Annals of Mathematics 162 (2005) 1063-1183 and to Samuel P. Ferguson, "Sphere Packings, V. Pentahedral Prisms", Discrete and Computational Geometry 36 (2006) 167-204. "The paper of Hales is a detailed description of the proof of the Kepler Conjecture. The proof of this result makes heavy use of linear and nonlinear optimization. The paper of Ferguson provides a difficult step in the Kepler proof."

See more information on the Fulkerson Prize. [Item posted 9/8/09]

2009-2010 AMS Project NExT Fellows

Each year the AMS sponsors six Project NExT (New Experiences in Teaching) Fellows who are affiliated with Ph.D.-granting institutions and who show promise in mathematics research. The 2009-2010 AMS Project NExT Fellows are (left to right in the photograph) Wenbo Tang, Daniel Cranston, Kelly McKinnie, Paul Jenkins, Nathaniel Eldredge, and Rebecca Schmitz.

• Wenbo Tang currently teaches at Arizona State University. His area is differential equations and dynamical systems. He completed his Ph.D. in December 2005 from the University of California, San Diego, held postdoctoral positions in the Mechanical Engineering Departments of UC San Diego and MIT.
• Daniel Cranston is currently at Virginia Commonwealth University. He has a Ph.D. in theoretical computer science (discrete math), from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2007, and has served a two-year postdoc at DIMACS and Bell Labs.
• Kelly McKinnie will be at the University of Montana. She earned her Ph.D. in algebra in May 2006 from the University of Texas at Austin, was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Emory University and Rice University.
• Paul Jenkins will teach at Brigham Young University, after earning a Ph.D. in May 2006 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in number theory, and being an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA.
• Nathaniel Eldredge, who earned a Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego, in 2009, is working in geometric partial differential equations. He will be at Cornell University this fall.
• Rebecca Schmitz will be at the University of Minnesota this fall. This postdoctoral appointment is with the Institute of Technology Center for Educational Programs at the University of Minnesota. In addition to research in Toeplitz and composition operators, she will embark on research projects in mathematics education. She earned her Ph.D. in 2008 from the University of Virginia.

Project NExT (New Experiences in Teaching) is a professional development program of the MAA for new or recent Ph.D.s in the mathematical sciences. It 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. Each year sixty to eighty new Ph.D.s receive Project NExT Fellowships, which allow them to attend special events at the summer MathFest of the Mathematical Association of America and at the Joint Mathematics Meetings. The AMS also holds activities for the AMS NExT Fellows at the Joint Mathematics Meetings. Read more about Project NExT. [Item posted 9/2/09]

U.S. Girls Team Members All Score Medals at China Girls Math Olympiad

The Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) announces that all seven members of the U.S. girls team won medals at the 8th China Girls Mathematical Olympiad (CGMO) held in Xiamen in Fujian Province, China, August 12-16. Gold medals were won by Jing-Jing (Shiyu) Li and Joy Zheng. Three girls won silver medals: Patricia Li, Carolyn Kim and Elizabeth Synge. Bronze medals were awarded to Ramya Rangan and Cynthia Day. The girls were chosen for the team from the top ranks of the female finalists in this year's U.S. Mathematical Olympiad, and the team was sponsored by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI). Photo: US Girls Team wearing their medals at the Closing Ceremony of the 2009 CGMO in China. Front row, from left to right, are: Carolyn Kim, Patricia Li, Jing-Jing (Shiyu) Li, Joy Zheng, Cynthia Day, Ramya Rangan, and Elizabeth Synge; behind the team in the second row are the teams' coaches: Jennifer Iglesias (a member of the US CGMO team in 2007 & 2008) and Zuming Feng, of Phillips Exeter Academy and academic director of the USAMO Summer Program since 2003.

"We are elated by the terrific performance of the U.S. CGMO team," said Robert Bryant, Director of MSRI. "The CGMO provides a great opportunity to encourage young women to study mathematics and to meet and work with others who are enthusiastic about developing their mathematical talents, which are so important for the future of our country. The CGMO experience has a profound effect on the young women who participate, and it provides an inspiration to other students, helping them connect with the fun and accomplishment of solving hard problems." The girls wrote an online travelogue with photos to share highlights from their trip to the CGMO. [Item posted 8/18/09]

Princeton Team's Advance in Packing Problem in Nature

Image: Princeton researchers have beaten the present world record for packing the most tetrahedra into a volume. Research into these so-called packing problems have produced deep mathematical ideas and led to practical applications as well. Princeton University/Torquato Lab.

"Finding the best way to pack the greatest quantity of a specifically shaped object into a confined space may sound simple, yet it consistently has led to deep mathematical concepts and practical applications, such as improved computer security codes. When mathematicians solved a famed sphere-packing problem in 2005, one that first had been posed by renowned mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler in 1611, it made worldwide headlines. Now, two Princeton University researchers [Salvatore Torquato, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials, and Yang Jiao, a graduate student in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering] have made a major advance in addressing a twist in the packing problem, jamming more tetrahedra--solid figures with four triangular faces--and other polyhedral solid objects than ever before into a space. The work could result in better ways to store data on compact discs as well as a better understanding of matter itself. Henry Cohn, a mathematician with Microsoft Research New England in Cambridge, Mass. says, 'the Princeton researchers, have thrown out a new challenge to the math world. Their results could be considered a 21st Century analogue of Kepler's conjecture about spheres. And, as with that conjecture, I'm sure their work will inspire many future advances.'" (from the Princeton University press release) The research is published in the August 13 issue of Nature and is featured on the cover. [Item posted 8/13/09]

U.S. Team to Compete at China Girls Mathematical Olympiad

Seven U.S. high school girls are in China to compete at the 2009 China Girls Mathematical Olympiad (CGMO). The international competition is being held in Xiamen in Fujian Province, China, from August 12 to August 16. Team members are: Joy Zheng, Ramya Rangan, Elizabeth Synge, Jing-Jing Li, Cynthia Day, Carolyn Kim, and Patricia Li. They were chosen from the top ranks of the female finalists in this year's U.S. Mathematical Olympiad. The team is sponsored by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, which is hosting an online travelogue about the event. Photo (left to right): Joy Zheng, Ramya Rangan, Elizabeth Synge, Jing-Jing Li, Cynthia Day, Carolyn Kim, and Patricia Li. (Photograph by Jennifer Iglesias, coach for the U.S. team and former member of the U.S. team at the CGMO in 2007 and 2008.) [Item posted 8/11/09]

Data Analysis Skills Are in Demand

An article by Steve Lohr in the August 6 edition of The New York Times ("For Today's Graduate, Just One Word: Statistics") talks about the increasing demand for people who can make sense of data. Computing and numerical skills are needed for applications such as improving Internet search engines, and analyzing data from sensors. Along with statisticians, Lohr writes that "the new data sleuths come from backgrounds like economics, computer science and mathematics." More on math-related articles appearing in newspapers, magazines, radio, and television is in Math in the Media. [Item posted 8/7/09]

Rudnick Appointed CMS Executive Director

The Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS) has appointed Johan Rudnick (left) as its new national executive director and secretary. Rudnick has a wide range of executive experience at the local, regional and national level. He is a recipient of a number of public service excellence awards, including a national Queens Golden Jubilee medal. Rudnick holds a B. Arch. from Carleton University and an MBA from Queens University. "Mathematics is a public interest that needs to be better understood and supported," he said. "Having worked on public interest issues for many years, advancing mathematics and the good works of the CMS is a cause that I am privileged to be involved with." To facilitate the transition of responsibilities, Graham Wright will remain as executive consultant on a part-time basis until December 31. (Image courtesy of Johan Rudnick.) [Item posted 7/29/09]

IMO 2009 Results

China finished first in the 50th International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), which was held in Bremen, Germany. This is China's fifth first-place finish in the last six Olympiads. The team from China finished with 221 points, out of a possible 252, with each team member earning a gold medal. Japan finished second, with 212 points, followed by Russia (203), South Korea (188), and North Korea (183). The U.S. team finished sixth with 182 points. Two members of the U.S. team: John Berman and Eric Larson, won gold medals, while the other four U.S. team members: Evan O'Dorney, Qinxuan Pan, Delong Meng, and Wenyu Cao, won silver medals. All results are online, with links to more information on the competition. This year's IMO drew 565 participants from 104 countries. Next year's IMO will take place July 2-15 in Astana, Kazakhstan. [Item posted 7/20/09]

National Association of Math Circles Website is Launched

The Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) announces the launch of the National Association of Math Circles (NAMC) website for the community of students, parents, teachers, and math circle organizers. Math circles enable mathematicians (often math professors from universities nearby) and math-related professionals to meet and teach motivated middle and high school students in informal after-school settings to work on interesting problems and topics in math. There are currently 58 math circles in the U.S. The new website supports the growing educational trend of after-school math groups and provides virtual primer on how to start a math circle for potential circle organizers.

"MSRI is pleased to partner with the Akamai Foundation to create this website, which will provide resources for fostering this invaluable group activity for young students of mathematics," said Dr. Robert Bryant, Director of MSRI. "These circles provide a welcoming and supportive environment where students can experience the joy of exploring mathematical ideas and solving problems. Students with these skills and experiences will join the leading edge of science researchers, making essential contributions to our nation's future." NAMC website users can locate local math circles; search for summer math camps, math events, and math competitions--from regional to national to international Olympiads; and access an extensive collection of math problems suitable for math circle settings (with solutions limited to organizers and teachers). Additionally, "Within the Circle," a video (funded by the Akamai Foundation) of several actual math circle sessions in action will be available, by request, through the NAMC website. [Item posted 7/15/09]

Bringmann Receives One Million Euro Krupp Prize

Kathrin Bringmann (at left), a number theorist at the University of Minnesota and the University of Cologne, has been awarded the Alfried Krupp-Förderpreis for Young Professors. The one million Euro prize, for a five-year period, is awarded by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation. She is the third mathematician to win the annual prize--Ursula Gather received the prize in 1987 and Albrecht Böttcher won in 1992. Bringmann is well known for her joint work with her postdoctoral mentor Ken Ono (University of Wisconsin-Madison) on Ramanujan's mock theta functions, which Ramanujan wrote about in 1920 as he was dying, although he did not provide details about the functions, including their definition. Following seminal work of the Dutch mathematician Sander Zwegers, Bringmann and Ono have built and applied their theory to many topics in mathematics: partitions and q-series, Moonshine, and elliptic curves, to name a few. On the mock theta functions, Bringmann said, "Imagine that a famous composer left, after his death, a symphony written in a secret code that only he himself could read." More information about the prize and Bringmann's research (in German) is at the DMV (Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung) website. (Image courtesy of Kathrin Bringmann.) [Item posted 7/2/09]

Common Core State Math Standards Groups Announced

The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) have announced the members of the Common Core State Standards Development Work Group and Feedback Group. The Standards Development Work Group is currently engaged in determining and writing college and career readiness standards in mathematics. This group is composed of content experts from Achieve, Inc., ACT, and the College Board. This group will be expanded later in the year to include additional experts to develop the mathematics standards for grades K-12. Similar efforts are underway in English. The members of the mathematics Work Group are:

• Sara Clough, Director, Elementary and Secondary School Programs, Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.
• Phil Daro, Senior Fellow, America’s Choice
• Susan K. Eddins, Educational Consultant, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (Retired)
• Kaye Forgione, Senior Associate and Team Leader for Mathematics, Achieve
• John Kraman, Associate Director, Research, Achieve
• Marci Ladd, Mathematics Consultant, The College Board and Senior Manager and Mathematics Content Lead, Academic Benchmarks
• William McCallum, University Distinguished Professor and Head, Department of Mathematics, The University of Arizona and Mathematics Consultant, Achieve
• Sherri Miller, Assistant Vice President, Educational Planning and Assessment System Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.
• Ken Mullen, Senior Program Development Associate—Mathematics, Elementary and Secondary School Programs, Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.
• Robin O’Callaghan, Senior Director, Mathematics, Research and Development, The College Board
• Andrew Schwartz, Assessment Manager, Research and Development, The College Board
• Laura McGiffert Slover, Vice President, Content and Policy Research, Achieve
• Douglas Sovde, Senior Associate, Mathematics, Achieve
• Natasha Vasavada, Senior Director, Standards and Curriculum Alignment Services, Research and Development, The College Board
• Jason Zimba, Faculty Member, Physics, Mathematics, and the Center for the Advancement of Public Action, Bennington College and Cofounder, Student Achievement Partners

The NGA Center and CCSSO have also created a Feedback Group to provide expert input on draft documents, although final decisions regarding the common core standards document will be made by the Standards Development Work Group. Members of the mathematics Feedback Group are:

• George Andrews, The Pennsylvania State University, Evan Pugh Professor of Mathematics and AMS President
• Hyman Bass, University of Michigan, Samuel Eilenberg Distinguished University Professor of Mathematics and Mathematics Education, former AMS President
• David Bressoud, Macalester College, DeWitt Wallace Professor of Mathematics and President of the Mathematical Association of America
• John Dossey, Illinois State University, Distinguished University Professor of Mathematics Emeritus
• Scott Eddins, Tennessee Department of Education, Mathematics Coordinator and President, Association of State Supervisors of Mathematics
• Brian Gong, The National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, Executive Director
• Roger Howe, Yale University, Professor of Mathematics
• Henry S. Kepner, Jr., University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Professor, Curriculum and Instruction and Mathematical Sciences
• Suzanne Lane, University of Pittsburgh, Professor in the Research Methodology Program, School of Education
• Robert Linn, University of Colorado, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, and Co-Director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing
• Jim Milgram, Stanford University, Professor of Mathematics, Emeritus, Department of Mathematics
• Fabio Milner, School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, Arizona State University, Director, Mathematics for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education
• Roxy Peck, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Associate Dean, College of Science and Mathematics and Professor of Statistics
• Nora Ramirez, TODOS: Mathematics for ALL, President
• William Schmidt, Michigan State University, College of Education, University Distinguished Professor
• Uri Treisman, University of Texas, Professor of Mathematics and Public Affairs and Executive Director, Charles A. Dana Center
• Vern Williams, Mathematics Teacher, HW Longfellow Middle School, Fairfax County, Virginia Public Schools
• W. Stephen Wilson, Johns Hopkins University, Professor of Mathematics

The groups' work on K-12 standards is expected to be completed in December. State and national education organizations will have an opportunity to review and provide evidence-based feedback on the draft documents throughout the process. See the core standards website for more information. [Item posted 7/2/09]

2009 Task Force on Employment Prospects Report and Survey

In January, motivated by concern about the impact current economic conditions are having on the job market for recent Ph.D.s, AMS President James Glimm appointed a Task Force on Employment Prospects chaired by Linda Keen, who serves on the AMS Board of Trustees. The goal of the task force was to provide information and recommendations to departments, individual job seekers, and professional societies to help them with challenges of the difficult market. In February, 68 departments were invited to respond to a brief survey designed to help gauge the severity of the current problem, and all 68 departments returned their responses to the online survey. Among other findings, the departments reported a drop of approximately 40 per cent in the number of doctorate-required positions that they had tried to fill for the upcoming academic year (compared to the previous academic year). The task force is very grateful for the help of the surveyed departments and believes that the survey provides the most comprehensive snapshot of the current state of the market for early career mathematical scientists. The task force report and survey summary are now posted. The AMS will follow up on the task force recommendations, and welcomes feedback and suggestions emailed to paoffice at ams dot org, subject line "task force." [Item posted 7/1/09]

Menger Awards at the 2009 ISEF

Front (left to right): Alicia Zhane, Sohini Sengupta, Almas Abdulla, Yale Wang Fan. Back (left to right): Sameer Kirtikumar Deshpande, Jeffrey Chan, Sarah Lee Sellers, Joshua Vekhter, Andrei Triffo, and Ed Connors. Click here to view a larger image.

The 2009 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) was held May 10-15, 2009 at the Reno- Sparks Convention Center in Reno, Nevada. More than 1500 students in grades nine through twelve from over 50 countries participated in the fair. Student finalists who compete at the ISEF go through a multi-step process to qualify and have won an all-expense-paid trip to the fair. In addition to numerous grand awards presented by the ISEF, sixty-seven federal agencies and professional and educational organizations, including the AMS, participated by giving special awards. Prizes given by the AMS included cash, certificates, AMS tote bags and books.

For the AMS this was the twenty-first year of participation and it was the nineteenth year of the presentation of the Karl Menger Awards. The members of the 2008-2009 AMS Menger Prize Committee and AMS Special Awards Judges were Ed Connors, University of Massachusetts (chair); Doron Levy, University of Maryland; and David Scott, University of Puget Sound. In the Mathematics Category forty five entries were individuals and twelve were submitted by teams of two or three students. The AMS gave awards to one first-place winner, two second-place winners, four third-place winners (one team of three students) and honorable mentions to five others. The Karl Menger Memorial Prize winners for 2009 are as follows:

• First-Place Award (US$1,000): "Graph Crossings and Cyclic Permutations: Towards a Proof of Zarankiewicz’s Conjecture," by Joshua Vekhter, Williamsville East High School, East Amherst, NY
• Second-Place Awards (US$500): "Infinite Sums of Zeta Functions and Other Dirichlet Series," by Andrei Triffo, Synge Street CBS Secondary School, Dublin, Ireland; "A Quantum Algorithm for Molecular Dynamics Simulation," by Yale Wang Fan, The Catlin Gabel School, Portland, OR
• Third-Place Awards (US$250): "Universal Law for the Distribution of Odd Periodic Cycles within Chaos in Nonlinear Dynamical Systems: An Analysis of Rigid Bifurcation," by Almas Abdulla, West Shore Junior/Senior High School, Melbourne, FL; "Dirichlet Prime Magic Square," by Sarah Lee Sellers, Hedgesville High School, Hedgesville, WV; "Controlling HIV from Transformation into AIDs: Mathematical Modeling of HIV Dynamics," by Sohini Sengupta, Ocean Lakes High School, Virginia Beach, VA; "Survival Analysis of Gene Expression Data Using a Hybrid Dimension Reduction Technique," by Sameer Kirtikumar Deshpande, Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science, Denton, TX, Jeffrey Chan, William P. Clements High School, Sugar Land, TX, and Alicia Zhang, Liberal Arts and Science Academy High School, Austin, TX
• Honorable Mention Awards: "Sequences of Reducible 0,1 Polynomials," by Martin Augustine Camacho, Central High School, St. Paul, MN; "Convergence Acceleration for the Power Series Representation of the Exponential Integral," by Michael Christopher Yurko, Detroit Catholic Central High School, Novi, MI; "MatheMagical Pool," by Wenhan Cui, Cookeville High School, Cookeville, TN; "An Analysis of Erdos's Conjecture," by Matthew Henry Stoffregen, Woodoland Hills High School, Pittsburgh, PA; "A Relativistic Generalization of the Navier-Stokes Equations to Quark-Gluon Plasmas," by Nilesh Tripuraneni, Clovis West High School, Fresno, CA.

The AMS's participation in the Intel-ISEF is supported in part by income from the Karl Menger Fund, which was established by the family of the late Karl Menger. [Item posted 7/1/09]

U.S. 2009 IMO Team

The six members of the U.S. team who will compete in the 2009 International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) are (in alphabetical order):

• John Berman, John T. Hoggard High School, Wilmington, NC
• Wenyu Cao, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA
• Eric Larson, South Eugene High School, Eugene, OR
• Delong Meng, Baton Rouge Magnet High School, Baton Rouge, LA
• Evan O'Dorney, home-schooled, Danville, CA
• Qinxuan Pan, Thomas S. Wootton High School, Rockville, MD

The IMO takes place in Bremen, Germany, July 10-22. This is the 50th IMO. The first was in Romania in 1959 (it was not held in 1980). More information about IMO 2009 is online. [Item posed 6/29/09]

Mathematics Research Communities in Snowbird

Click here to view a larger image.

The first Mathematics Research Communities (MRC) summer conference of 2009, Mathematical Challenges of Relativity, concludes today at the Snowbird Resort in Utah. The week-long conference, organized by Mihalis Dafermos (University of Cambridge), Alexandru Ionescu (University of Wisconsin, Madison), Sergiu Klainerman (Princeton University), Chair, and Richard Schoen (Stanford University), drew 40 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. The next three conferences are Inverse Problems (June 20-26), Modern Markov Chains and Their Statistical Applications (June 27-July 3) and Harmonic Analysis (June 27-July 3). [Item posted 6/19/09]

Shaw Prize to Donaldson and Taubes

Image courtesy of Imperial College, London

Simon K. Donaldson (Imperial College, London) and Clifford H. Taubes (Harvard University) have been awarded the 2009 Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences "for their many brilliant contributions to geometry in three and four dimensions." The two will share the US$1,000,000 prize. Donaldson is the Royal Society Research Professor of Pure Mathematics and President of the Institute for Mathematical Sciences at Imperial College. He received his Ph.D. from Oxford University in 1983 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1986. He received the Nemmers Prize in Mathematics in 2008. Taubes is the William Petschek Professor of Mathematics at Harvard, who received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1980. He is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. In 1991 Taubes received the AMS Veblen Prize and in 2008 he won the NAS Award in Mathematics. The following is taken from the citation written by the Shaw Prize Mathematical Sciences Committee. Understanding "three-dimensional space and four-dimensional space-time has been fundamental for both geometers and physicists in the 20th and 21st centuries. Simon K. Donaldson and Clifford H. Taubes are the two geometers who have transformed the whole subject by pioneering techniques and ideas originating in theoretical physics, including quantum theory. ... [Between them, they] have totally changed our geometrical understanding of space and time." The Shaw Prize is an international award managed by the Shaw Prize Foundation, based in Hong Kong. The presentation ceremony will take place October 7. [Item posted 6/16/09]

MSC 2010 to Launch on July 1

The Mathematics Subject Classification (MSC) has undergone a general revision, with some additions, changes, and corrections, to create MSC2010, the successor to the present MSC2000. As anticipated, there are no changes at the two-digit level but refinements have been made at the three- and five-digit levels. Starting in July, Mathematical Reviews (MR) and Zentralblatt für Mathematik (Zbl) will use MSC2010 as their classification scheme. MR and Zbl collaborate in maintaining the MSC, which is used by these reviewing services and many others to categorize items in the mathematical sciences literature. MR and Zbl carefully considered input received from the community in recent years, especially since the announcement of the projected revision in 2006, and used it in the preparation of their joint MSC revision. The final MSC2010, the result of four working drafts, can be viewed at http://msc2010.org. These drafts were publicly developed using the MSCwiki at this site, which will remain open for public view and to document any corrections to MSC2010 that may be made. Various PDF forms and an interactive TiddlyWiki version of MSC2010 are also there. All information about MSC2010 is jointly shared by MR and Zbl. The editors--Graeme Fairweather, Executive Editor, MR, and Bernd Wegner, Editor-in-Chief, Zbl--and their staffs wish to express their gratitude to the numerous members of the community for their assistance in this lengthy revision process. [Item posted 6/16/09]

Courant's Abel Prize Winners in The New York Times

"Complex Math, Simple Sum: 3 Awards in 5 Years" is an article in the June 1 Times about the three Courant Institute faculty who have won the Abel Prize since 2005: Peter Lax (2005), Srinivasa S.R. Varadhan (2007), and Mikhail Gromov (2009). When Varadhan won in 2007, King Harald of Norway asked him, "Since you are a specialist in probabilities, what is the probability that you'll have another prize winner from your institution?" He replied that he thought the chance was "Probably very small," yet this year Mikhail Gromov became the latest winner from New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. AMS Executive Director Don McClure is quoted in the article, saying that the Abel Prize "has the same distinction as a Nobel Prize, and there's no other institution in the United States or in the world that has had such a concentration of these awards." More on math-related articles appearing in newspapers, magazines, radio, and television is in Math in the Media. [Item posted 6/2/09]

The Chern Medal - A New Award in Mathematics

The International Mathematical Union (IMU) and the Chern Medal Foundation have launched a new mathematical prize, the Chern Medal Award, in memory of the late Shiing-Shen Chern. The award is for an individual whose lifelong achievements in mathematics warrant the highest level of recognition. Half of the monetary award of US$500,000 will be donated to organizations of the recipient's choice. The first Chern Medal will be awarded at the opening ceremony of ICM 2010 in Hyderabad, India (August 19, 2010). An IMU press release (pdf) has more information. [Item posted 6/1/09]

AMS Announces Price Freeze for 2010

In response to the economic recession and its impact on the academic community, the American Mathematical Society is freezing the prices of its subscription-based products--journals, MathSciNet and the Mathematical Reviews (MR) Database fee--at the 2009 levels. This price freeze applies to all 2010 subscriptions, in both print and electronic formats, including MathSciNet consortia subscriptions. The publishers of journals distributed by the AMS, also concerned about the impact of the global recession on the academic community, have joined the AMS in freezing their journal prices for 2010 as well. See the complete list of AMS journals and AMS-distributed journals.

In addition, the AMS will not increase the 2009 dues rate for AMS Institutional Members in 2010.

Contact for questions and subscription renewals: AMS Customer Services Department, 201 Charles Street, Providence, RI 02904 USA; email: cust-serv@ams.org; telephone: 800-321-4267 (US and Canada) or 401-455-4000 (worldwide). [Item posted 5/20/09]

Mikhail Gromov Receives Abel Prize

King Harald of Norway presented the 2009 Abel Prize to Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov, Permanent Professor, Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (France), and professor at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, at an award ceremony in Oslo, May 19. Queen Sonja and the Norwegian Minister of Research and Higher Education, Tora Aasland, were among the many other prominent persons present. The Abel Prize, which carries an award of 6,000,000 Norwegian kroner (over US$900,000), is awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. The prize was awarded to Gromov for his revolutionary contributions to geometry. Kristian Seip, the chairman of the Abel Committee, elaborated on this in his speech at the award ceremony: "Mikhail Gromov is a remarkably creative mathematician. He is always in pursuit of new questions and is constantly thinking of new ideas for solutions of long-standing problems. The work of Gromov will for a long time to come continue to be a source of inspiration for many important mathematical discoveries." The Abel Prize website has news about the ceremonies, photographs and a video. (Photo: Erlend Aas/Scanpix)  [Item posted 5/19/09]

NSF Math Institutes Create New Jobs

In response to a loss of jobs as a result of the poor economy, seven National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded mathematical sciences research institutes have created 45 new one- and two-year positions for recent Ph.D.s, allowing them to teach at community colleges and other higher-education institutions or to participate in projects tied to business and industry. More than 700 applications were received for the 45 positions, including 400 from people who received their Ph.D. this year. The seven institutes are: the American Institute of Mathematics, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications, the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, the Mathematical Biosciences Institute, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, and the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute. A press release from the institutes has more information about the positions. [Item posted 5/13/09]

Discussion on the Mathematics Behind Tom Stoppard's Arcadia

The AMS and the MAA will hold a discussion on mathematics and the theatre to be held Monday, May 18 from 7 to 9 p.m. at the MAA'’s Carriage House (1781 Church Street) in Washington, DC. This event is being held in conjunction with the Folger Theatre’s production of the acclaimed play Arcadia, which runs until June 14 at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre in Washington. Folger cast members, Folger Dramaturg Michele Osherow, and Production Mathematics Consultant Manil Suri (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) will discuss the challenges of representing mathematicians–and mathematics–on stage. The MAA site has an RSVP form and more information on the discussion. [Item posted 5/8/09]

"Hidden riddle of shapes solved"

Mike Hopkins (Harvard University), Douglas Ravenel (University of Rochester) and Mike Hill (University of Virginia) announced at the Atiyah80 conference in Edinburgh, UK, on April 21 that they have solved the 45-year-old Kervaire invariant problem. The announcement is available to Nature subscribers at "Hidden riddle of shapes solved," by Philip Ball (Nature News, 1 May 2009). The Kervaire problem is "one of the major outstanding problems in algebraic and geometric topology," states Nick Kuhn (University of Virginia). Ball explains "although it looks at face value to be extremely abstruse, the mathematics involved in the solution might be relevant to quantum theory and string theory, not to mention brane theory, which has been invoked to explore some issues in Big Bang cosmology." See more on the solution of this problem online. [Item posted 5/4/09]

Nation's Report Card in Math

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) latest report, based on scores on tests given in the 2007-08 school year to more than 26,000 9-, 13- and 17-year olds, found that in math:

• Average scores for 9- and 13-year olds increased since the last report in 2004 and since the first assessment in 1973;
• Average scores for 17-year olds showed no significant change when compared to scores in both 2004 and 1973;
• Racial/ethnic gaps in average scores did not show significant change in any of the three age groups since 2004, but those gaps had narrowed since testing began; and
• The percentage of students taking "higher-level" math increased (for 13-year olds, 30% took algebra vs. 16% in 1986; for 17-year olds, 19% took calculus or precalculus vs. 6% in 1978).

The NAEP is conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (part of the U.S. Department of Education), which is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education. [Item posted 4/29/09]

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 from 15 countries in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Members elected in the mathematical sciences are:

• Sun-Yung Alice Chang, professor, department of mathematics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
• Percy A. Deift, professor, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, New York
• John E. Hopcroft, professor, computer science department, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
• John W. Morgan, professor of mathematics, department of mathematics, Columbia University, New York
• Christos Papadimitriou, C. Lester Hogan Professor, computer science division, University of California, Berkeley
• Gilbert Strang, professor of mathematics, department of mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
• Cumrun Vafa, Donner Professor of Science, department of physics, Center for Fundamental Laws of Nature, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
• Wing H. Wong, professor of statistics and professor of health research and policy, department of statistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA

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 4/28/09]

American Academy of Arts & Sciences Elects New Fellows

The American Academy of Arts & Sciences has announced its 2009 election of new fellows. The 210 new fellows include the following people from the mathematical sciences:

• Spencer Janney Bloch, University of Chicago
• Robert A. Fefferman, University of Chicago
• Dorian Goldfeld, Columbia University
• Douglas R. Hofstadter, Indiana University
• Maria Klawe, Harvey Mudd College
• Stanley J. Osher, University of California, Los Angeles
• Michael Sipser, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Terence Tao, University of California, Los Angeles
• Gunther Uhlmann, University of Washington
• Ruth J. Williams, University of California, San Diego

The induction ceremony for this year's class, which also includes Nelson Mandela and actor Dustin Hoffman, will take place October 10 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, sorted alphabetically or by subject, can be linked to from an academy news release. [Item posted 4/20/09]

Mathematician Ken Golden Profiled in Science

Image courtesy of Ken Golden.

The April 3 issue of Science has a profile of Ken Golden (pictured at left), this year's Mathematics Awareness Month Committee chair. The article, "Cold Equations" by Dana Mackenzie, describes how Golden has used mathematics to understand the properties of sea ice--an important, yet poorly understood, component in the climate. Golden also relates some of his adventures studying sea ice in the Antarctic. He is the author of a feature article in the May issue of Notices (pp. 562-584), "Climate Change and the Mathematics of Transport in Sea Ice." Read more about Golden's work with sea ice and listen to him talking about his work and his adventures in the Mathematical Moment Going With the Floes. Note: Also in the April 3 issue of Science is a picture of AMS Associate Executive Director Sam Rankin, head of the AMS Washington Division, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is interviewed about government funding of math and science ("Nancy Pelosi: Foursquare for Science," p. 24). More on math-related articles appearing in newspapers, magazines, radio, and television is in Math in the Media. [Item posted 4/6/09]

2008 Putnam Results

Harvard team members (left to right) Iurie Boreico, Zachary Abel, and Arnav Tripathy. Photo courtesy of the Department of Mathematics, Harvard University.)

Below are the team and individual winners of the 69th William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, which took place last December 6. 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, Iurie Boreico, and Arnav Tripathy) Princeton University (Peter Z. Diao, John V. Pardon, and Adrian I. Zahariuc) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Qingchun Ren, Xuancheng Shao, and Yufei Zhao) Stanford University (Young Hun Jung, Nathan K. Pflueger, and Jeffrey Wang) California Institute of Technology (Jason C. Bland, Zarathustra E. Brady, and Brian Lawrence)

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

• Brian R. Lawrence (California Institute of Technology)
• Seok Hyeong Lee (Stanford University)
• Arnav Tripathy (Harvard University)
• Bohua Zhan (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
• Yufie Zhao (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Viktoriya Krakovna, of the University of Toronto, is the winner of the Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize, which is awarded to a woman whose performance on the exam is "particularly meritorious," and which has a cash award of $1000.

The Putnam Competition is for North American undergraduates and is administered by the Mathematical Association of America. More than 3600 students from 545 colleges and universities participated in the competition. Problems, solutions, and results from the 2008 exam and from previous exams, are online. [Item posted 3/27/09]

Gromov Wins 2009 Abel Prize

Abel Laureate 2009: Mikhail L. Gromov. Photo: Gérard Uferas

The 2009 Abel Prize is awarded to Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov, Permanent Professor, Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, France, and professor at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, "for his revolutionary contributions to geometry." The award is 6 million Norwegian Kroner, approximately US$950,000, 700,000 Euros. Gromov's name is forever attached to deep results and important concepts within Riemannian geometry, symplectic geometry, string theory and group theory. The Abel committee says: "Mikhail Gromov is always in pursuit of new questions and is constantly thinking of new ideas for solutions to old problems. He has produced deep and original work throughout his career and remains remarkably creative. The work of Gromov will continue to be a source of inspiration for many future mathematical discoveries." Mikhail L. Gromov has received many distinguished international awards, including the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences (2002), the Balzan Prize (1999), the Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research (1997), the Lobatchewski Medal (1997) and the Wolf Prize (1993). He is a foreign member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of l'Académie française de Sciences. Gromov is the third faculty member from the Courant Institute to win the Abel Prize in the seven years that it's been awarded. Peter Lax won in 2005 and Srinivasa S.R. Varadhan won in 2007.

The work of Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov has had tremendous impact on geometry and has reached from there into major applications in analysis and algebra. The American Mathematical Society extends hearty congratulations and good wishes to Mikhail Gromov on his award of the 2009 Abel Prize. One cannot imagine a more worthy recipient. --- George Andrews, AMS President

The Abel Prize is awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters for outstanding scientific work in the field of mathematics. Gromov will be given the prize by His Majesty King Harald at an award ceremony in Oslo, Norway, on May 19. More information about Gromov, his work, the prize, and a video of today's announcement is also on the Abel Prize website.

Articles on Gromov published in the Notices of the AMS: "Gromov Receives Nemmers Prize", August 2004: "Encounter with a Geometer I," by Marcel Berger, February 2000; "Encounter with a Geometer II," by Marcel Berger, March 2000; "Leroy P. Steele Prize," March 1997 . [Item posted 3/26/09]

AMS Graduate Student Blog is Launched

The AMS Graduate Student Blog is a new blog by and for math graduate students, managed by Frank Morgan, Vice-President, American Mathematical Society, and Professor of Mathematics at Williams College. "Graduate students are the future of the AMS, and they have a lot to talk about," says Morgan.

The Graduate Student Editorial Board members are Asher Auel, Adam Boocher, Diana Davis, Daniel Erman, Fernando Galaz, Brian Katz, Alex Levin, Kathryn Lindsey, Andrew Obus, David Shea Vela-Vick, Clay Shonkwiler, Annalies Z. Vuong, and Tom Wright, and Morgan hopes that more grad students from around the country will be interested in joining the board. The blog entries to date concern organizing a reading seminar, how to give a good mathematics talk, advice for beginning teaching assistants, navigating seminars and finding an advisor--topics of great importance to graduate students, who are all are invited to join the community by posting comments, questions and advice on the blog.

The American Mathematical Society encourages all graduate students in the mathematical sciences to visit and use the AMS Graduate Student Blog, hosted by Williams College. [Item posted 3/17/09]

Lagarias to Give Next Erdős Lecture

Jeffrey Lagarias (University of Michigan) will give the upcoming Erdős Memorial Lecture, From Apollonian circle packings to Fibonacci numbers, on March 28 at the 2009 Spring Central Section Meeting, which will take place at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In the lecture he'll describe results in number theory and group theory that arise from Apollonian circle packings, and contrast some of the properties relating to the circles' curvatures with those of Fibonacci and Lucas numbers. Among Lagarias' many interests are discrete geometry, low-dimensional topology, number theory, and operations research. See more on Lagarias, the lecture and the meeting. The Erdős Memorial Lecture is an annual invited address made possible by a fund created by Andrew Beal, a Dallas banker and mathematics enthusiast. The lecture is named for the prolific mathematician Paul Erdős, who died in 1996. The Beal Prize Fund, now US$100,000, is held by the AMS until it is awarded for a correct solution to the Beal Conjecture. At Mr. Beal's request, the interest from the fund is used to support the Erdős Memorial Lecture. [Item posted 3/16/09]

Conrey to Give 2009 Conant Lecture

Brian Conrey, executive director of the American Institute of Mathematics, will give the 2009 Levi L. Conant Lecture, The Riemann Hypothesis--A million dollar mystery, at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) on March 30. The Riemann Hypothesis is one of Hilbert's 23 problems, proposed in 1900, and is one of seven Millennium Prize Problems, each of which carries a US$1,000,000 prize from the Clay Mathematics Institute for a solution. In the talk Conrey will explain the hypothesis and some of the colorful history associated with efforts to solve it. Conrey is a winner of the 2008 Levi L. Conant Prize for his 2003 Notices article "The Riemann Hypothesis." The public lecture series, featuring Conant Prize winners, is sponsored by WPI and hosted by the Institute's Department of Mathematical Sciences. The department has posted more information about the lecture. (Plot of one over the zeta function, courtesy of Brian Conrey.) [Item posted 3/12/09]

UPDATE: a video of Conrey's talk is available on the Worcester Polytechnic Institute website. (Windows Media Player is required.) [4/16/09]

Math Project Wins Intel Science Talent Search

Elizabeth Marincola from Society for Science and the Public and Intel Chairman Craig Barrett award first place to Eric Larson (Photo: Robin Weiner/Intel)

Eric Larson, of Eugene, OR, won first place and a $100,000 scholarship in the 2009 Intel Science Talent Search (ISTS) for his project The Classification of Certain Fusion Categories, in which he classified fusion categories of dimension pq2 where p and q are distinct primes. Eric was a silver medalist at the 2007 International Mathematics Olympiad and won a $50,000 scholarship in the 2008 Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology. Also finishing in the top 10 in the ISTS was Noah Arbesfeld of Lexington, MA, who was awarded sixth place and a $25,000 scholarship for his project On the Structure of Lower Central Series Quotients of a Free Associative Algebra. See more on the competition and the top ten projects. The ISTS is funded by the Intel Corporation and the Intel Foundation, and administered by the Society for Science and the Public. [Item posted 3/11/09]

AMS Epsilon Fund Makes 2009 Awards

The AMS has chosen ten summer mathematics programs to receive Epsilon grants for 2009:

At the 2008 Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics (HCSSiM) camp. The frisbees commemorate Mathematica's 20th anniversary and each student was given a copy of Mathematica as well as the frisbee. "HCSSiM has taught me a whole new way of viewing and learning math." "I've never been around so many people who love math as much as I do, and it's great. Nobody's afraid to be who they are... The people here are just interesting and exhilarating to be around."   At the 2008 PROMYS summer program at Boston University.

Achievement in Mathematics Program (AMP), Lamar University, Beaumont, TX, Sandra Richardson and Otilia Urbina, directors 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 and Sarah-Marie Belcastro, directors MathPath, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Stephen Maurer and George R. Thomas, 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 Research Science Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, Joanne P. DiGennaro and Cliff Bowman, directors Ross Mathematics Program, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, Daniel B. Shaprio, director Texas State University Honors Summer Math Camp, Texas State University, San Marcos, Max Warshauer, director "It's always exciting trying to keep up with unleashed mathematical minds as they share the joy of discovering, conjecturing, and proving; they push collaboratively through much more material, much more quickly, and apprehend it much more deeply than when faculty try to drag them through a syllabus." --- David C. Kelly, co-director, HCSSiM

In 2008, the Epsilon Fund, the endowment whose income supports the Young Scholars program, reached the initial funding goal of US$2 million. A very generous anonymous gift helped achieve that goal, together with numerous contributions from AMS members and others in the mathematical community. The AMS continues to place a high priority on supporting the programs that bring mathematically talented high school students together and introduce them to mathematical research. [Item posted 3/4/09]

George E. Andrews Takes Office as AMS President, 2009-2010

George E. Andrews, the Evan Pugh Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Pennsylvania State University, begins this week a two-year term as President of the American Mathematical Society. He succeeds James G. Glimm, Distinguished Professor of Applied Mathematics and Statistics at Stony Brook University. "I greatly look forward to my work as President of the American Mathematical Society," Andrews said. "I shall support and promote mathematics to the best of my ability. This is a difficult time for the nation and an especially difficult time for mathematicians early in their careers. I hope to find ways to aid these people in their efforts to get established." Andrews' main area of research is in number theory, specifically, the theory of partitions and related areas. He is best known for his study of the works of the brilliant self-taught Indian mathematician, Srinavasa Ramanujan. The news release includes more information about Andrews' career, research, and thoughts on becoming AMS President. [Item posted 2/3/09]

Top Job in America: Mathematician

An article in Monday's Wall Street Journal, "Doing the Math to Find the Good Jobs," lists "mathematician" as the top job in the U.S. "Actuary" and "statistician" were ranked second and third, respectively. The rankings, done by CareerCast.com, were based on work environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands, and stress. According to the study, the median annual salary for a mathematician is $94,160. The job of lumberjack finished last (200th) in the study. [Item posted 1/6/09]

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