<<

Arnold and Faddeev Receive 2008

On June 10, 2008, the Shaw Foundation , born in 1937 in , announced it would award its annual Ukrainian SSR, is presently the chief scientist at Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences the Steklov Mathematical Institute in Moscow and to Vladimir Arnold and Ludwig a professor at the Université de Paris Dauphine. Faddeev “for their widespread and He obtained his first degree in 1959 at Moscow influential contributions to Mathemati- State University, was awarded a candidate’s de- cal Physics”. The prize carries a cash gree (equivalent to a Ph.D.) in 1961, and became a award of US$1 million. professor in 1965. He is a member of the Russian The Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sci- Academy of Sciences. ences committee made the following Ludwig Faddeev, born in 1934 in Leningrad (now Vladimir Arnold statement: St. Petersburg), Russia, is a director of the Euler “Vladimir Arnold, together with International Mathematical Institute, Petersburg Andrei Kolmogorov and Jürgen Moser, Department of the Steklov Institute of Mathemat- made fundamental contributions to the ics. He graduated from Leningrad State University study of stability in dynamical systems, in 1956 and received his Doctor of Physical and exemplified by the motion of the plan- Mathematical Sciences degree in 1963. He has been ets round the sun. This work laid the a professor at Leningrad State University since foundation for all subsequent develop- 1967. During 1986–1990, he served as president ments right up to the present time. of the International Mathematical Union. He is a “Arnold also produced extremely member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the fruitful ideas, relating classical me- U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the French chanics to questions of . This Academy of Sciences. includes the famous Arnold Conjec- The Shaw Prize is an international award to ture, which was only recently solved. honor individuals who are currently active in their “In classical hydrodynamics the Ludwig Faddeev basic equations of an ideal fluid were respective fields and have achieved distinguished derived by Euler in 1757, and major and significant advances, who have made out- steps towards understanding them were taken by standing contributions in culture and the arts, or Helmholtz in 1858 and Kelvin in 1869. The next who in other domains have achieved excellence. significant breakthrough was made by Arnold a The award is dedicated to furthering societal century later, and this has provided the basis for progress, enhancing quality of life, and enriching more recent work. humanity’s spiritual civilization. Preference is “Ludwig Faddeev has made many important given to individuals whose significant work was contributions to quantum physics. Together with recently achieved. Boris Popov he showed the right way to quantize The Shaw Prize consists of three annual awards: the famous non-Abelian theory which underlies all the Prize in Astronomy, the Prize in Life Science contemporary work on sub-atomic physics. This and Medicine, and the Prize in Mathematical Sci- led in particular to the work of ’t Hooft and Velt- ences. Each prize carries a monetary award of US$1 man, which was recognized by the Nobel Prize for million. Established under the auspices of Run Run Physics of 1999. Shaw in November 2002, the prize is managed and “Faddeev also developed (jointly with Valentin administered by the Shaw Prize Foundation, based Pavlov) the quantum version of the beautiful the- in Hong Kong. ory of integrable systems in two dimensions, which Previous recipients of the Shaw Prize in Math- has important applications in solid state physics as ematical Sciences are and Rich- well as in recent models of string theory. ard Taylor (2007), and Wen-Tsun “In another application of the scattering theory Wu (2006), (2005), and Shiing-Shen of differential operators, Faddeev discovered a Chern (2004). surprising link with and the famous —From Shaw Foundation Announcements .”

966 Notices of the AMS Volume 55, Number 8