George David Birkhoff Prize in Applied Mathematics

This prize was established in 1967 in honor of Professor George David Birkhoff. The initial endowment was contributed by the Birkhoff family and there have been subsequent additions by others. It is awarded for an outstanding contribution to "applied mathematics in the highest and broadest sense". Currently, the prize amount is US$5,000, and it is awarded every three years. The award is made jointly by the American Mathematical Society and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. The recipient must be a member of one of these societies and a resident of the United States, Canada, or Mexico.

Next award:  January 2009.  Call for nominations.

Twelfth award, 2006 : To Cathleen Synge Morawetz for her deep and influential work in partial differential equations, most notably in the study of shock waves, transonic flow, scattering theory, and conformally invariant estimates for the wave equation.

Eleventh award, 2003 : To John Mather for being a mathematician of exceptional depth, power, and originality; and to Charles S. Peskin for devoting much of his career to understanding the dynamics of the human heart and bringing an extraordinarily broad range of expertise to bear on this problem.

Tenth award, 1998 : To Paul H. Rabinowitz for his deep influence on the field of nonlinear analysis.

Ninth award, 1994: To Ivo Babuska for important contributions to the reliability of finite element methods, the development of a general framework for finite element error estimation, and the development of p and h-p finite element methods; and to S. R. S. Varadhan for important contributions to the martingale characterization of diffusion processes, to the theory of large deviations for functionals of occupation times of Markov processes, and to the study of random media.

Eighth award, 1988: To Elliott H. Lieb for his profound analysis of problems arising in mathematical physics.

Seventh award, 1983: To Paul R. Garabedian for his important contributions to partial differential equations, to the mathematical analysis of problems of transonic flow and airfoil design by the method of complexification, and to the development and application of scientific computing to problems of fluid dynamics and plasma physics.

Sixth award, 1978: To Clifford A. Truesdell for his outstanding contributions to our understanding of the subjects of rational mechanics and nonlinear materials, for his efforts to give precise mathematical formulation to these classical subjects, for his many contributions to applied mathematics in the fields of acoustic theory, kinetic theory, and nonlinear elastic theory, and the thermodynamics of mixtures, and for his major work in the history of mechanics.

Fifth award, 1978: To Mark Kac for his important contributions to statistical mechanics and to probability theory and its applications.

Fourth award, 1978: To Garrett Birkhoff for bringing the methods of algebra and the highest standards of mathematics to scientific applications.

Third award, 1973: To James B. Serrin for his fundamental contributions to the theory of nonlinear partial differential equations, especially his work on existence and regularity theory for nonlinear elliptic equations, and applications of his work to the theory of minimal surfaces in higher dimensions.

Second award, 1973: To Fritz John for his outstanding work in partial differential equations, in numerical analysis, and, particularly, in nonlinear elasticity theory; the latter work has led to his study of quasi-isometric mappings as well as functions of bounded mean oscillation, which have had impact in other areas of analysis.

First award, 1968: To J?K. Moser for his contributions to the theory of Hamiltonian dynamical systems, especially his proof of the stability of periodic solutions of Hamiltonian systems having two degrees of freedom and his specific applications of the ideas in connection with this work.