| | 1 | Name: | Dr. Lipman Bers | | | Institution: | Columbia University | | | Year Elected: | 1980 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1914 | | | Death Date: | 10/29/93 | | | | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. Garrett Birkhoff | | | Institution: | Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 1960 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1911 | | | Death Date: | 11/22/96 | | | | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. David Blackwell | | | Institution: | University of California, Berkeley | | | Year Elected: | 1990 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1919 | | | Death Date: | July 8, 2010 | | | | | | |
David Blackwell was professor of statistics and mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley from 1954 until his retirement in 1989, when he was named Professor Emeritus of Statistics. He also held positions at Southern University, Clark College and Howard University and worked for the RAND Corporation between 1948 and 1950, where he developed an interest in game theory. His research contributions combine great breadth with deep creativity, and in several areas his work set the course for subsequent research. He was one of the first major contributors in the field of sequential analysis, a subject that is of wide practical interest, and his analysis of Bayesian sequential procedures had a major impact on further developments in this field. His work on the theory of dynamic programming was central to the development of this immensely practical and widely applicable field. Dr. Blackwell has served as president of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and has also been vice president of the American Statistical Association, the International Statistical Institute and the American Mathematical Society. In 1965 he became the first African American named to the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Blackwell is the recipient of numerous honors, including the von Neumann Theory Prize, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He died on July 8, 2010, in Berkeley, at age 91. | |
| 4 | Name: | Dr. Shiing-shen Chern | | | Institution: | University of California, Berkeley | | | Year Elected: | 1989 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1911 | | | Death Date: | December 3, 2004 | | | | |
| 5 | Name: | Dr. Paul J. Cohen | | | Institution: | Stanford University | | | Year Elected: | 1972 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1934 | | | Death Date: | March 23, 2007 | | | | |
| 6 | Name: | Dr. Ingrid Daubechies | | | Institution: | Duke University | | | Year Elected: | 2003 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1954 | | | | | | |
Ingrid Daubechies is a mathematician who has worked primarily on mathematical foundations of quantum theory, but she is best known for her important work on wavelets. "Wavelets" are signal components used in the efficient transmission of compressed data. Wavelet theory provides the essential background for many practical applications including speech transmission, high-density TV, and recent animated movies such as "A Bug's Life." According to a recent National Academy of Sciences report, Dr. Daubechies' work "...turn(ed) the theory into a practical tool that can be easily programmed..." An excellent speaker, Dr. Daubechies has recently been active in mathematics education, serving on the Mathematics and Science Education Board and with the Center for Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Education. Born in Belgium, she earned her Ph.D. from Virge University in 1980 and was a professor of mathematics at Princeton University 1993-2011. She joined the faculty of Duke University as Professor of Mathematics in January 2011. She became a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow in 2010 and won the 2011 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering from the Franklin Institute. | |
| 7 | Name: | Dr. Pierre Deligne | | | Institution: | Institute for Advanced Study | | | Year Elected: | 2009 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1944 | | | | | | |
Pierre Deligne has been a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton since 1984. He is the world's leading algebraic geometer, having received his Doctorat en mathématiques from the University of Brussels in 1968 and his Doctorat d'Etat des Sciences Mathématiques from the University of Paris-Sud in 1972. The methods he introduced have so completely permeated the subject that a large portion of the current research in algebraic geometry can't even be formulated without them. Consequently, his research is constantly referred to by young workers in the field. So far as is known, Deligne is the only mathematician in history to be commemorated by a postage stamp during his lifetime (.70 Euro, Belgium). He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1978, the Crafoord Prize in 1998, the Balzan Prize in Mathematics in 2004, the Wolf Prize in 2008, and the Abel prize in 2013. He belongs to the Académie des Sciences, Paris (1978), the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (1978), the National Academy of Sciences (2007), and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2009). | |
| 8 | Name: | Dr. Persi Diaconis | | | Institution: | Stanford University | | | Year Elected: | 2005 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1945 | | | | | | |
Persi Diaconis works at the interface between mathematics and statistics. He studies problems such as "how many times should a deck of cards be shuffled to mix it up?" (The answer is about seven.) Related problems are determining relaxation times for natural mixing processes in Monte Carlo sampling. His work uses probability theory, group theory and combinatorics. He also works hard at trying to make common (and mathematical) sense out of recent statistical procedures. He is well-known as a debunker of pseudo-science and through his former life as a professional magician. | |
| 9 | Name: | Dr. David L. Donoho | | | Institution: | Stanford University | | | Year Elected: | 2019 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1957 | | | | | | |
David L. Donoho is currently Professor of Statistics and Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor in the Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1984. Prior to moving to Stanford, he worked for a decade at the University of California, Berkeley.
Dramatic developments in technology present fundamental new challenges in theoretical and applied mathematical statistics. David Donoho has played a major role in building powerful new mathematical and statistical tools to deal with these problems, ranging from how best to extract information from large data-sets in high dimensions to how to deal with contamination by noise. His work provides fast, efficient, and often optimal algorithms that are founded on rigorous mathematical analysis. He introduced many now standard techniques that overcome difficulties caused by noise with very little loss of efficiency or reliability. Along the way, he demonstrated the power of the mathematical theory of wavelets in dealing with such problems in statistics. He also developed efficient techniques for sparse representation and recovery in large data-sets.
Among his awards are a MacArthur Fellowship in 1991, the John von Neumann Prize of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) in 2001, the Weiner Prize of AMS-SIAM in 2011, and the Shaw Prize in 2013. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1998), French Academy of Sciences (2009), and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2012). David Donoho was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019. | |
| 10 | Name: | Dr. Andrew J. Wiles | | | Institution: | University of Oxford | | | Year Elected: | 1997 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1953 | | | | | | |
Andrew Wiles is currently Royal Society Research Professor at Oxford University. He was a professor at Princeton from 1994 to 2011. Dr. Wiles has made major breakthroughs in the study of rational elliptic curves associated with modular forms and is most famous for proving Fermat's Last Theorem, which for 350 years stood as a "Mount Everest" of mathematics. He was introduced to the theorem at age ten and tried to prove it during his youth before stopping to study elliptic curves during his graduate studies. He eventually dedicated eight years to the proof, announcing a solution on June 23, 1993 at the conclusion of a lecture at the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge, England. When mathematicians raised questions about his proof, Dr. Wiles himself noticed a flaw, which sent him back to work for nearly a year. In October 1994, he unveiled his revised proof, which has been confirmed by experts in the field. For his efforts, Dr. Wiles has received, among other awards, the Schock Prize (1995), the Cole Prize (1996), the Royal Medal (1996), the Wolf Prize (1996), the Clay Research Award (1999) and a silver plaque from the International Mathematics Union recognizing his achievements. He earned his BA degree from Merton College, Oxford University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from Clare College, Cambridge University in 1980. In 2000 he was named a Knight of the British Empire. | |
| 11 | Name: | Dr. Charles L. Fefferman | | | Institution: | Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 1988 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1949 | | | | | | |
Charles Fefferman has been professor of mathematics at Princeton University since 1974. After earning his Ph.D. from Princeton at the age of 20, he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, becoming in 1971 the youngest full professor at an American university. In 1974 he returned to Princeton. Winner of the Fields Medal, Dr. Fefferman has obtained results of unusual depth in several fields of classical analysis: Fourier analysis; the general theory of linear partial differential equations; and the theory of holomorphic mappings and pseudoconvex domains in several complex variables. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. | |
| 12 | Name: | Dr. Ralph Edward Gomory | | | Institution: | Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; NYU Stern | | | Year Elected: | 1985 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1929 | | | | | | |
Ralph E. Gomory served as President of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation from June 1989 to January 2008. He now serves as Director of Special Programs. Dr. Gomory received his B.A. from Williams College in 1950, studied at Cambridge University and received his Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton University in 1954. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1954 to 1957. Dr. Gomory was Higgins Lecturer and Assistant Professor at Princeton University from 1957 to 59. He joined the Research Division of IBM in 1959, was named IBM Fellow in 1964, and became Director of the Mathematical Sciences Department in 1965. He was made IBM Director of Research in 1970 a position he held until 1986, becoming IBM Vice President in 1973 and Senior Vice President in 1985. In 1986 he became IBM Senior Vice President for Science and Technology, a position which he held until 1989 when he retired from IBM. Dr. Gomory is a member of both the National Academies of Science and of Engineering. He has been awarded a number of honorary degrees and prizes including the Lanchester Prize in 1963; the John von Neumann Theory Prize in 1984; the IEEE Engineering Leadership Recognition Award in 1988; the National Medal of Science in 1988; the Arthur M. Bueche Award of the National Academy of Engineering in 1993; the Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment in 1998; the Madison Medal Award of Princeton University in 1999; and the Sheffield Fellowship Award of the Yale University Faculty of Engineering in 2000. He was named to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in 1990 and served to March 1993. Dr. Gomory has been an American Philosophical Society member since 1985. | |
| 13 | Name: | Dr. Phillip A. Griffiths | | | Institution: | Institute for Advanced Study;
University of Miami | | | Year Elected: | 1992 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1938 | | | | | | |
Phillip A. Griffiths is Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study's School of Mathematics. He holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University and has served on the faculties of the University of California, Berkeley (1964-67), Harvard University (1967-83)and Duke University (1983-91). Dr. Griffiths's mathematical research is in geometry. He and his collaborators initiated the theory of variation of Hodge structure, which has come to play a central role in many aspects of algebraic geometry and the uses of that subject in modern theoretical physics. In addition to algebraic geometry, Dr. Griffiths has made contributions to differential and integral geometry, geometric function theory and the geometry of partial differential equations. Past Director of the Institute for Advanced Study (1991-2003), Dr. Griffiths leads the Millennium Science Initiative (MSI) whose primary goal is to create and nurture world-class science and scientific talent in the developing world. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Mathematical Society's LeRoy P. Steele Prize (1972, 2013), the Gottingen Academy of Sciences's Dannie Heineman Prize (1979); the Wolf Prize (jointly with Pierre Deligne and David Mumford, 2008); the Royal Dutch Mathematical Society's Brouwer Prize (2008); and the Chern Medal (2014). | |
| 14 | Name: | Dr. Benedict H. Gross | | | Institution: | Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 2017 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1950 | | | | | | |
Benedict Gross has contributed decisively to number theory, algebraic geometry, modular forms and group representations. Gross and Don Zagier solved the class number problem which had been formulated by APS member Karl Friedrich Gauss in 1798. This problem was to give an algorithm to list all discrete rings embedded in the complex numbers with a given class number. The class number is a measure of the failure of unique factorization in the ring. (The analogous problem for the real numbers was already solved by the ancient Greeks. There is only one discrete ring embedded in the real numbers, namely the integers. Euclid in 300 BC proved that unique factorization holds in the integers, hence its class number is 1, the minimum possible value.) The theorem of Gross and Zagier was one of the major achievements in number theory of the 20th century. Gross is an expert on analytic number theory, which exploits the striking relationships between analysis, in the sense of calculus, and arithmetic in the sense of counting. He has made many many diverse discoveries. Most recently, he has explored the role of exceptional Lie groups in number theory. His development of arithmetic invariant theory with Manjul Bhargava promises to generate a whole new field of future research. Together with Joe Harris, he developed a mathematics course for non-mathematicians at Harvard. This led to his popular book, The Magic of Numbers, co-authored with J. Harris, which provides a readable introduction to the patterns that emerge in number behavior and the often surprising applications of these patterns. | |
| 15 | Name: | Dr. Samuel Karlin | | | Institution: | Stanford University | | | Year Elected: | 1995 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1924 | | | Death Date: | December 18, 2007 | | | | |
| 16 | Name: | Dr. Richard M. Karp | | | Institution: | University of California, Berkeley | | | Year Elected: | 1994 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1935 | | | | | | |
Richard M. Karp was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 3, 1935. He attended Boston Latin School and Harvard University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1959. From 1959-68 he was a member of the Mathematical Sciences Department at IBM Research. From 1968-94 and from 1999 to the present he has been a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he held the Class of 1939 Chair and is currently a University Professor. From 1988-95 and 1999 to the present he has been a Research Scientist at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley. From 1995-99 he was a Professor at the University of Washington. During the 1985-86 academic year he was the co-organizer of a Computational Complexity Year at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley. During the 1999-2000 academic year he was the Hewlett-Packard Visiting Professor at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. The unifying theme in Karp's work has been the study of combinatorial algorithms. His 1972 paper, "Reducibility Among Combinatorial Problems," showed that many of the most commonly studied combinatorial problems are NP-complete, and hence likely to be intractable. Much of his work has concerned parallel algorithms, the probabilistic analysis of combinatorial optimization algorithms and the construction of randomized algorithms for combinatorial problems. His current activities center around algorithmic methods in genomics and computer networking. He has supervised thirty-six Ph.D. dissertations. His honors and awards include the U.S. National Medal of Science, the Turing Award, the Kyoto Prize, the Fulkerson Prize, the Harvey Prize (Technion), Harvard University's Centennial Medal, the Lanchester Prize, the Von Neumann Theory Prize and Lectureship, the University of California, Berkeley's Distinguished Teaching Award and Miller Research Professorship, the Babbage Prize, and ten honorary degrees. He is a member of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences and Engineering, the American Philosophical Society and the French Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science. | |
| 17 | Name: | Dr. Saunders Mac Lane | | | Institution: | University of Chicago | | | Year Elected: | 1949 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1909 | | | Death Date: | April 14, 2005 | | | | |
| 18 | Name: | Dr. Robert P. Langlands | | | Institution: | Institute for Advanced Study | | | Year Elected: | 2004 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1936 | | | | | | |
The "Langlands Philosophy" is widely recognized as the most far-reaching dream that mathematicians currently have for the future development of mathematics. For the past three centuries, the subject of modular forms has been a major strand of mathematics, treated by such great mathematicians as Euler and Gauss. But it had the character of a bag of tricks and special results. Then, in 1967, Dr. Langlands announced the "Langlands conjectures," which displayed for the first time the underlying patterns at work. In the 35 years since then, these conjectures have become increasingly important. Guided by them, an underlying unity has been found, with deep consequences for many branches of mathematics. These include number theory (where Langlands' work played a role in Wiles' proof of Fermat's conjecture), algebraic geometry (where 30 of the best young geometers work in what they call "geometric Langlands theory"), and representation theory (where the Langlands conjectures lead to a classification of the representations that come up in the study of quantum mechanics). Today, the Langlands conjectures provide the basic motivation and guidance for the work of many mathematicians working in diverse fields. Dr. Langlands has also written extensively on mathematical physics, and he has a strong interest in history. A graduate of Yale University (Ph.D., 1960), he has been a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study since 1972. He is currently Professor of Mathematics Emeritus. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and has been awarded the Lester R. Ford Prize from the Mathematical Association of America. In 2018 he was awarded the Abel Prize. | |
| 19 | Name: | Dr. Peter D. Lax | | | Institution: | New York University | | | Year Elected: | 1996 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1926 | | | | | | |
Peter D. Lax is a most distinguished mathematician who has earned renown for his contributions in both pure and applied mathematics. One of many methods named after him is Lax pairs, which came from his analysis of fluid dynamics. His name is connected with many major mathematical results and numerical methods, including the Lax equivalence theorem, Lax-Friedrichs scheme, Lax-Wendroff scheme, Lax entropy condition, and Lax-Levermore theory. His work covers all aspects of partial differential equations. In linear theory it includes his fundamental oscillatory approximation for solving hyperbolic equations, which led to the theory of Fourier Integral Operators. His famous collaboration with R.S. Phillips involves extremely deep work in scattering theory and connects with problems on automorphic functions in hyperbolic geometry. Dr. Lax has also done basic work in numerical analysis for partial differential equations. In nonlinear theory he has done fundamental work on shock waves, and on KdV equations: completely integrable systems possessing solition solutions. A native of Hungary, Dr. Lax earned his Ph.D. from New York University in 1949 and has served at NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences since 1958. He has also directed the Courant Mathematics and Computing Lab and is currently Professor of Mathematics Emeritus. Dr. Lax has won many honors such as the Chauvenet Prize (1974), the National Medal of Science (1986), the Wolf Prize (1987), the Abel Prize (2005) and membership in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Lax is the author of numerous works, including textbooks on functional analysis, linear algebra, calculus and partial differential equations. | |
| 20 | Name: | Dr. Chia-Chiao Lin | | | Institution: | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 1978 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1916 | | | Death Date: | January 13, 2013 | | | | | | |
Chinese-born physicist Chia-Chiao Lin made major contributions to the theory of superfluid helium, hydrodynamic stability and turbulent diffusion as well as in mathematics and astrophysics. He is also credited with finding a mathematical explanation for the propagation of a spiral structure in disk nebulae. After moving to the United States to study at the California Institute of Technology, Dr. Lin earned his Ph. D. in 1944. Since that time he has taught at Cal Tech (1943-45), Brown University (1945-47) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1947-87), where he became Institute Professor in 1966 and retired in 1987. | |
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