| | 1 | Name: | Professor Vladimir I. Arnold | | | Institution: | Steklov Institute of Mathematics & Academy of Sciences, Russia & CEREMADE, University of Paris, Dauphine, France | | | Year Elected: | 1990 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1937 | | | Death Date: | June 3, 2010 | | | | | | |
Vladimir Arnold was born in 1937 in Odessa (then U.S.S.R, presently Ukraine). One of the most distinguished mathematicians in the world, he was educated at Moscow State University and became famous at age 19 for his brilliant solution to Hilbert's 13th problem. In this solution, Dr. Arnold was able to prove that each continuous function of three variables is representable as a super position of continuous functions of two variables -- the exact opposite of what people expected. Dr. Arnold is also one of the founders of KAM theory. In this theory, if one perturbs a completely integratable Hamiltonian system the resulting system still possesses infinitely many invariant tori. The theory has many applications in celestial mechanics and plasma physics, among other fields. In his examination of infinite dimensional Hamiltonian systems, Dr. Arnold studied the Euler equations of ideal gas flow as equations of geodesics on an infinite dimensional lie group of smooth volume preserving transformation. He has conducted path-breaking work on singularity theory and its use in caustics and wave fronts, discovering connections with regular polyhedra and crystallographic symmetry groups - fundamental work connecting real algebraic topology and modern topology and in symplectic and variational problems. The author of a number of outstanding textbooks, Dr. Arnold held professorial positions at Moscow State University for twenty-five years. At present he teaches at Steklove Mathematical Institute in Moscow and the Universite Paris 9. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the French Academy of Science and the Royal Society of London, among others. He is the recipient of many awards, including the 1982 Crafoord Prize of the Swedish Academy, the 2001 Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics, the 2001 Wolf Prize in Mathematics, the 2007 State Prize of the Russian Federation and the 2008 Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences. | |
| 2 | Name: | Sir Michael Atiyah | | | Institution: | University of Edinburgh | | | Year Elected: | 1991 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1929 | | | Death Date: | January 11, 2019 | | | | | | |
One of the greatest mathematicians of his times, Sir Michael Atiyah made fundamental contributions to many areas of mathematics, but especially to topology, geometry and analysis. From his first major contribution - topological K-theory - to his later work on quantum field theory, Sir Michael has been influential in the development of new theoretical tools and has supplied far-reaching insights. He was a notable collaborator, with his name linked with other oustanding mathematicians through their joint research. He was awarded a Fields Medal in 1966 and was President of the Royal Society and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. A superb lecturer, he possesses the ability to explain sophisticated mathematics in a simple geometric way. Formerly a professor at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities and the Institute for Advanced Study, he was an inspiring teacher who instructed an outstanding group of former students. Sir Michael Atiyah was the recipient of many honors and awards, including election as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1962, a knighthood in 1983 and the Order of Merit in 1992. He served as Chancellor of the University of Leicester from 1995-2005, as President of the Royal Society London from 1990-1995, as President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh from 2005-2008, and was later an Honorary Professor at Edinburgh University in Scotland. In 1993 he was awarded the American Philosophical Society's Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences. The citation read "in recognition of significant contributions to a remarkable range of mathematical topics, which established links between differential geometry, topology, and analysis; and creating useful mathematical tools for physicists." Sir Michael Atiyah died on January 11, 2019 at the age of 89. | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. Armand Borel | | | Institution: | Institute for Advanced Study | | | Year Elected: | 1985 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1923 | | | Death Date: | August 11, 2003 | | | | |
| 4 | Name: | Sir David Cox | | | Institution: | Nuffield College, Oxford | | | Year Elected: | 1990 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1924 | | | Death Date: | January 18, 2022 | | | | | | |
A statistician of considerable distinction, Sir David Cox has been instrumental in the exploration and expansion of statistical methodology. The new methods and formations he has proposed include: discrimination between non-contagious families of distributions (1961); databased choice of transformations (1964); and introduction of the Cox model of survival analysis (1972). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Leeds in 1949 and has taught at the University of Cambridge (assistant lecturer, 1950-55) , Birkbeck College (reader in and professor of statistics, 1956-66) and the Imperial College of Science and Technology (professor of statistics, 1966-88, and head of the math department, 1970-74). Currently affiliated with the Department of Statistics, University of Oxford, where he is also an Honorary Fellow of Nuffield College, Sir David also served as Warden of the College from 1988-94. His academic awards include the Guy Medal in Silver and Guy Medal in Gold, both from the Royal Statistical Society; the Weldon Memorial Prize, University of Oxford; the Kettering Prize and Gold Medal for Cancer Research; the Max Planck Forschungspreise; the International Prize in Statistics (2016); and the BBVA Foundations Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Basic Sciences (2017). | |
| 5 | Name: | Dr. Andrei N. Kolmogorov | | | Year Elected: | 1961 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1903 | | | Death Date: | 10/20/87 | | | | |
| 6 | Name: | Dr. André Weil | | | Institution: | Institute for Advanced Study | | | Year Elected: | 1995 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1906 | | | Death Date: | 8/6/98 | | | | |
| 7 | Name: | Dr. William Timothy Gowers | | | Institution: | University of Cambridge & Trinity College | | | Year Elected: | 2010 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1963 | | | | | | |
Early in his career, Timothy Gowers did outstanding work in abstract Banach space theory, a theory which involves sets which are operators or functions. In a series of brilliant papers, he solved several long-standing problems, introducing extensive use of methods from combinatorial number theory. One of his surprising results is the construction of a Banach space with almost no symmetry. He is now better known to the broad mathematical community by his later work in combinatorial number theory. His very original ideas (for example "Gowers norms"), led to a new proof of Szmeredi's theorem, which concerns the occurrence of arithmetic progressions in sets of integers. His ideas have led to many breakthroughs in the field, in particular concerning the occurrence of arithmetic progressions in the primes (a longstanding conjecture of Erdos and now a theorem of Gowers’ students Ben Green and Terry Tao.) He continues to lead the research in this combinatorial number theory, which is now having impact on and benefiting computer science. Gowers has also put much effort into bringing mathematics to the public in his writing which includes his book Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction (2002) and his many public lectures. He recently organized the writing of The Princeton Companion to Mathematics (2008). This is a book of over 1,000 pages, incorporating sections by over 100 of the world's best mathematicians. It is aimed at giving anyone with some undergraduate training in mathematics a taste of current knowledge in all of modern mathematics. This kind of contribution, by one of the world's leading researchers at the height of his productive years, is very unusual. | |
| 8 | Name: | Dr. Stephen William Hawking | | | Institution: | University of Cambridge | | | Year Elected: | 1984 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1942 | | | Death Date: | March 13, 2018 | | | | | | |
Stephen William Hawking was born in 1942 in Oxford, England. He attended St. Albans School at age eleven and went on to University College, Oxford, where he studied physics, and Cambridge, where he conducted research in cosmology. After gaining his Ph.D. he became first a Research Fellow, and later on a Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. After leaving the Institute of Astronomy in 1973 Dr. Hawking came to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and from 1979 held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a position previously held by, among others, Isaac Barrow and Isaac Newton. Stephen Hawking had long studied the basic laws which govern the universe. With Roger Penrose he showed that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity implied that space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in black holes. These results indicated it was necessary to unify General Relativity with Quantum Theory, the other great scientific development of the first half of the 20th century. One consequence of such a unification that he discovered was that black holes should not be completely black but should emit radiation and eventually evaporate and disappear. Another conjecture is that the universe has no edge or boundary in imaginary time. This would imply that the way the universe began was completely determined by the laws of science. Dr. Hawking's many publications include The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime (with G. F. R. Ellis); General Relativity: An Einstein Centenary Survey ; and 300 Years of Gravity (both with W. Israel). Dr. Hawking also published several popular books: his best seller A Brief History of Time, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, and The Grand Design (2010). Professor Hawking held twelve honorary degrees, was awarded the CBE in 1982, and was made a Companion of Honour in 1989. He was the recipient of many awards, medals and prizes, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009) and the Fundamental Physics Prize (2012), and was a Fellow of The Royal Society and a Member of the National Academy of Sciences. He became the first distinguished research chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Canada's leading scientifc trust, in 2008. Stephen Hawking died March 13, 2018, at age 76, in Cambridge, England. | |
| 9 | Name: | Dr. Jean Leray | | | Institution: | Collège de France | | | Year Elected: | 1959 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1906 | | | Death Date: | 11/10/98 | | | | |
| 10 | Name: | Sir James Lighthill | | | Institution: | University College of London | | | Year Elected: | 1970 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1924 | | | Death Date: | 7/17/98 | | | | |
| 11 | Name: | Sir Roger Penrose | | | Institution: | University of Oxford | | | Year Elected: | 2011 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1931 | | | | | | |
Roger Penrose has been producing original and important scientific ideas for half a century, having earned his Ph.D. from St. Johns College, Cambridge in 1957. His work is characterized by exceptional geometrical and physical insight. He applied new mathematical techniques to Einstein’s general relativity and led the renaissance in gravitation theory in the 1960s. His novel ideas on space and time and his concept of "twistors" are increasingly influential. This remarkable mathematical theory combining algebraic and geometrical methods has been one of his major breakthroughs. Even his recreations have had intellectual impact: for instance, his studies of the "impossible figures" in Escher’s artwork, and the never-repeating patterns of "Penrose tiling." He has influenced and stimulated a wide public through his lectures and his best-selling and wide-ranging books, including: Techniques of Differential Topology in Relativity, 1972; (with W. Rindler) Spinors and Space-Time, Vol. 1, 1984, Vol. 2, 1986; The Emperor’s New Mind, 1989; Shadows of the Mind, 1996; Collected Works (six volumes), 2010. He has won a number of awards, including the W. H. Heinemann Prize (1971), the Science Book Prize (1990), Order of Merit (1994), the Eddington Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, De Morgan Medal of the London Mathematical Society (2004) and the Copley Medal of the Royal Society (2008), and belongs to a number of academic societies, including the Royal Society, the Royal Irish Academy, the Polish Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences (1998). Roger Penrose won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2020. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2011. | |
| 12 | Name: | Dr. Michael O. Rabin | | | Institution: | Hebrew University & Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 1988 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1931 | | | | | | |
Michael Rabin earned his M.Sc. from the Hebrew University and his Ph.D. from Princeton University, where he received his first academic appointment. Later he served as a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study and as a member of the faculty at the Hebrew University, serving as its Rector (Academic Head) from 1972-75. He was also Saville Fellow at Merton College, Oxford, and Steward Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. From 1982-94 he served on the IBM Science Advisory Committee. Dr. Rabin's research interests include complexity of computations, efficient algorithms, randomized algorithms, DNA to DNA Computing, parallel and distributed computation and computer security. Among his inventions are (with Y. Aumann and Y.Z. Ding) Hyper-Encryption, the first ever encryption scheme probably providing everlasting secrecy against a computationally unbounded adversary; (with S.Micali and J. Kilian) Zero Knowledge Sets, a new primitive for privacy and security protocols; and (with W. Yang and H. Rao) a micro chip for physical generation of a strong stream of truly random bits. Dr. Rubin's accomplishments have been recognized with awards including the ACM Turing Award in Computer Science, the ACM Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award, the Rothschild Prize in Mathematics, the Weizmann Prize in Exact Sciences, the IEEE Charles Babbage Award and the Harvey Prize for Science and Technology. He is a member or foreign honorary member to academies including the National Academy of Sciences, the French Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Since 1980 he has been Albert Einstein Professor of Mathematics at Hebrew University and since 1983 has served as Thomas J. Watson, Sr., Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University. | |
| 13 | Name: | Dr. Jean-Pierre Serre | | | Institution: | Collège de France | | | Year Elected: | 1998 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1926 | | | | | | |
Jean-Pierre Serre is one of the leading mathematicians of the twentieth century, active in algebraic geometry, number theory and topology. He has received numerous awards and honors for his mathematical research and exposition, including the Fields Medal in 1954. Born in Bages, France, Dr. Serre was educated at the Lycée de Nîmes and then from 1945-48 at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. He was awarded his doctorate from the Sorbonne in 1951. From 1948-54 he held positions at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. He is now a professor at the Collège de France (1956) and a leading member of "Bourbaki," the well-known group of French mathematicians. | |
| 14 | Name: | Dr. Ivan M. Vinogradov | | | Year Elected: | 1942 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1891 | | | Death Date: | 3/20/83 | | | | |
| |