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2005–2006 News ArchiveGregory Lawler Awarded Pólya PrizeGregory Lawler has been
selected by the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM)
to receive the 2006 George Pólya
Prize for groundbreaking work on the development and application of Stochastic
Loewner Evolution (SLE). He will share the prize with Oded Schramm
and Wendelin Werner for their joint work. Established in 1969,
the George Pólya Prize is given every two years in one of two
alternating categories. This year’s prize will be awarded
at the 2006 SIAM Annual Meeting to be held July 10-14, 2006 in Massachussetts. The
Pólya Prize was awarded once before to a Cornell mathematician: Harry
Kesten in 1994. [About
the Polya Prize] Karen Vogtmann to be 2007 AWM Noether LecturerThe Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) has announced
the selection of Karen
Vogtmann as
the 2007 AWM Noether Lecturer. The Noether Lectures honor women
who have made fundamental and sustained contributions to the mathematical
sciences. This one-hour expository lecture will be presented at
the Joint Mathematics Meetings in New Orleans, January 2007. Emmy
Noether was one of the great mathematicians of her time, someone who
worked and struggled for what she loved and believed in. Her life and
work remain a tremendous inspiration. Keeping and Sharing SecretsProfessor Graeme Bailey, Department of Computer Science, will give a
public lecture Wednesday, April 26th, 4:30 PM in Malott Hall's Bache
Auditorium (room 228) for Mathematics Awareness Month. His lecture, Keeping
and Sharing Secrets,
will be aimed at a general audience. [Poster] Saloff-Coste Wins Guggenheim Fellowship Laurent Saloff-Coste has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship by the
the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Prof. Saloff-Coste joins
a select group of men and women who have demonstrated exceptional
capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in
the arts. Established in 1925 by United States Senator Simon Guggenheim
and his wife in memory of their son, the foundation offers fellowships
to further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them
to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of
the arts, under the freest possible conditions and irrespective of race,
color, or creed. Previous winners in the department include Wolfgang
Fuchs (1956), Harry Kesten (1972),
Cliff Earle (1974),
Leonard Gross (1974), Moss Sweedler (1980)
John Guckenheimer (1983), and Richard Durrett (1988). Awards Presented at Department Holiday PartyOn Friday, December 2nd, at the department's annual holiday party, Department Chair Ken Brown presented the department teaching awards for 2005. David Henderson received the senior faculty award for his dedication to teaching and to training and inspiring the next generation of mathematics teachers, and for developing innovative classroom methods and textbooks which have had a national impact on the teaching of geometry to prospective teachers. Hsiao-Bing Cheng won the junior faculty award. Students cite his "unmatched clarity and precision," his ability to "make difficult topics easy to grasp and to follow," as well as his skill at "providing a good challenge;" in addition, they find him "friendly and approachable" both in class and out. The teaching assistant award was given jointly to Melanie Pivarski and Treven Wall. The selection committee was impressed by Melanie's patience and skill in guiding students at all levels to discover mathematics for themselves, and for her contributions to mentoring her fellow graduate students as TAs. They cited Treven's creativity and innovation in instruction that engages students in thinking about mathematical ideas in accessible and meaningful ways. Director of Graduate Studies Michael Stillman presented the Battig Prize jointly to Sarah Koch and Andrei Maxim, the York Award to Guan-Yu Chen, and the Hutchinson Award to Henri Johnston and Mauricio Velasco. Log Cabin was the winner of the third annual gingerbread house contest. It was completed by: Jessica Zuniga, Ben Chan, James Worthington, Mauricio Velasco, Jay Schweig, Sarah Koch, Heather Armstrong, Drew Armstrong, Bradley Forrest, Mike O'Connor, Luke Rogers, and Tim Goldberg. Related Links: Teaching
Awards | Graduate
Student Awards | Holiday
Party Photos Faculty Member Elected to Fellowship of the Royal Society of New ZealandOn November 16th, the Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand
held its 40th Fellows' Annual General Meeting in Wellington. At the AGM,
nine new Fellows were elected, among them visiting Professor Bakhadyr
Khoussainov. Sacks Prize Awarded to Recent Cornell Ph.D.Antonio Montalban
has been awarded the Sacks prize by the Association of Symbolic Logic
this year for the best dissertation in logic world wide. His dissertation,
Beyond the Arithmetic, was written under the direction of Richard
Shore. Antonio is our second winner (Denis Hirschfeldt '99 was the
first). Cornell Faculty to Speak at International Congress of MathematiciansCornell Mathematics professors Birgit
Speh and Karen Vogtmann
have been invited to address the International
Congress of Mathematicians, to be held in August 2006 in Madrid, Spain.
Other speakers include alumni Martin Bridson (Ph.D. 1991) and Jon Kleinberg
(B.A. 1993). The ICM is held once every four years and is attended by
thousands of mathematicians from around the world. Professors Harry
Kesten, Greg Lawler and
John Smillie gave invited
addresses in August 2002 in Beijing. Persi Diaconis to Give Kieval Lecture On Wednesday, September 14th, Persi Diaconis will give the 2005 Kieval
Lecture. His talk, Mathematics and Magic Tricks, is sure to be
a crowd-pleaser. Refreshments will be served at 4:00 PM in 532 Malott
Hall, and the talk will begin at 4:30 PM in Malott Hall's Bache Auditorium. The Uncertainty Principle [CyberTower Views] Cornell's CyberTower is
a forum for faculty to discuss interesting things. Prof. Robert
Strichartz is the first Mathematics Department contributor. Click
here to access a movie of him talking about The Uncertainty Principle.
His remarks are aimed at a general audience. John Guckenheimer New Associate Dean of CIS John Guckenheimer has been appointed associate dean of Computing and Information Science, effective August 1, 2005. Details can be found in the following sources:
—posted August 16, 2005; revised November 30, 2005 Crocheting Hyperbolic Space Senior Research Associate Daina Taimina was featured in a recent article in the New York Times for her ability to crochet models of hyperbolic space. Professor Lets Her Fingers Do the Talking, New York Times, July 11, 2005. Surfaces can be described using the notion of curvature — a flat plane has zero curvature, a sphere has constant positive curvature, but a hyperbolic plane is a surface with constant negative curvature. In the 1970s William Thurston came up with an idea to make a model of a hyperbolic plane out of paper. In 1997 Daina saw such a model for the first time and decided to make a set for her geometry class using crochet. Recently her work has been of interest in the art world. Some of her models are on display in the art show "Not the Knitting You Know" June 13–September 10, 2005, Washington D.C. See also Well
now, isn't this a cozy little cosmos, LA Times, July 29, 2005. Jahrbuch Project Receives PAM Award The Jahrbuch Project has been given the PAM Division Award for 2005 by
the Special Libraries Association for its significant contribution to
the field of Mathematics. This award honors work that demonstrably improves
the exchange of information in physics, mathematics or astronomy, and
that benefits libraries or enhances the ability of librarians to provide
service. The award was presented in Toronto during the annual meeting
of the SLA on Tuesday, June 7, 2005, at the PAM Annual Business Meeting
and Breakfast. Prof. Dr. Bernd Wegner (TU Berlin), long-time editor-in-chief
of Zentralblatt für Mathematik, and Professor Keith
Dennis, former editor-in-chief of Mathematical Reviews were project
editors. More Last modified:January 15, 2013 |
