Mathematics

"In a recent paper, Manjul Bhargava of Princeton University has settled an 85-year-old conjecture about one of math’s most ancient obsessions: the solutions to polynomial equations such as x2 – 3x + 2 = 0. 'It’s a great problem, famous old question,' said Andrew Granville, a professor at the University of Montreal. '[Bhargava] had an interesting, somewhat different approach, which was very creative.'"

"For more than 250 years, mathematicians have been trying to 'blow up' some of the most important equations in physics: those that describe how fluids flow. If they succeed, then they will have discovered a scenario in which those equations break down — a vortex that spins infinitely fast, perhaps, or a current that abruptly stops and starts, or a particle that whips past its neighbors infinitely quickly."

Seven IAS scholars across all four IAS Schools, including one current Academic Trustee, have won 2022 Guggenheim Fellowships, one of the most remarkable honors for mid-career researchers, artists, and writers. 

"Lillian Pierce vividly remembers a moment when she was 4 years old, waiting in her family’s station wagon for her older brother and sister to get out of school, magnolia trees forming pink and white arches overhead. Her mother was sitting in the driver’s seat, writing sequences of numbers in blue ink, balancing her checkbook. Pierce was mesmerized."

Dennis Parnell Sullivan, past Visitor (1967–70, 1975) in the School of Mathematics, is this year’s winner of the prestigious Abel Prize. He is cited by the Abel Committee “for his groundbreaking contributions to topology in its broadest sense, and in particular its algebraic, geometric and dynamical aspects.” 

"Within mathematics, there is a vast and ever expanding web of conjectures, theorems and ideas called the Langlands program. That program links seemingly disconnected subfields. It is such a force that some mathematicians say it—or some aspect of it—belongs in the esteemed ranks of the Millennium Prize Problems, a list of the top open questions in math. Edward Frenkel, a mathematician at the University of California, Berkeley, has even dubbed the Langlands program 'a Grand Unified Theory of Mathematics.'"

"Just as there are von Neumann machines and von Neumann algebras, there are von Neumann anecdotes. Here’s a well-worn favorite. Late in the 1940s, years after he left Hungary for the United States and became a lionized mathematician, John von Neumann met a group of Rand Corporation scientists who wanted to use a computer he’d helped design."

Mimi Dai, von Neumann Fellow in the School of Mathematics and associate professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, has received the AMS Centennial Fellowship for the 2022–2023 academic year.

Eight past Members in the School of Mathematics and the School of Natural Sciences are among the recipients of the 2022 Sloan Research Fellowships, a landmark honor for early-career scholars. 

George Lusztig, past Distinguished Visiting Professor (1998–99) and past Member (1969–71, 1988, 2020) in the School of Mathematics, has won the 2022 Wolf Prize in Mathematics for his “groundbreaking contributions to representation theory and related areas.”