Six Former Institute Members Receive Mathematics Prizes

Six former Members and a former Visitor in the Institute for Advanced Study’s School of Mathematics received major prizes at the Joint Mathematics Meetings on January 10, 2013, in San Diego. The American Mathematical Society (AMS) Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement was awarded to Yakov Sinai, a Member in the School in 1991. Sinai was recognized for his “pivotal role” in shaping the theory of dynamical systems, as well as his “groundbreaking” contributions to ergodic theory, probability theory, statistical mechanics, and mathematical physics. The Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition was awarded to former Members John Guckenheimer (1970–72 and 1988–89) and Philip Holmes (2003) for their now-classic book Nonlinear Oscillations, Dynamical Systems, and Bifurcations of Vector Fields (Springer, 1983). The AMS E. H. Moore Research Article Prize was awarded to Michael J. Larsen, a Member in 1988–90, along with Richard Pink, for their article “Finite Subgroups of Algebraic Groups” (Journal of the AMS 24, 2011). The AMS David P. Robbins Prize was awarded to Alexander Razborov, a Member in 1993–94 and a Visiting Professor in 2000–08, for his article “On the Minimal Density of Triangles in Graphs” (Combinatorics, Probability and Computing 17, 2008). The AMS–Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Norbert Wiener Prize in Applied Mathematics was awarded to Andrew J. Majda, a Member in 1988 and 1991–92, for his work on theoretical fluid mechanics and its applications in atmospheric science and oceanography. The Mathematical Association of America awarded its Chauvenet Prize to Robert Ghrist, a Visitor in 1995, for his article "Barcodes: The Persistent Topology of Data" Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 45 (2008).