Spring 2014 Fine Letters
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Spring 2014 Issue 3 Department of Mathematics Department of Mathematics Princeton University Fine Hall, Washington Rd. Princeton, NJ 08544 Department Chair’s letter The department is continuing its period of Assistant to the Chair and to the Depart- transition and renewal. Although long- ment Manager, and Will Crow as Faculty The Wolf time faculty members John Conway and Assistant. The uniform opinion of the Ed Nelson became emeriti last July, we faculty and staff is that we made great Prize for look forward to many years of Ed being choices. Peter amongst us and for John continuing to hold Among major faculty honors Alice Chang Sarnak court in his “office” in the nook across from became a member of the Academia Sinica, Professor Peter Sarnak will be awarded this the common room. We are extremely Elliott Lieb became a Foreign Member of year’s Wolf Prize in Mathematics. delighted that Fernando Coda Marques and the Royal Society, John Mather won the The prize is awarded annually by the Wolf Assaf Naor (last Fall’s Minerva Lecturer) Brouwer Prize, Sophie Morel won the in- Foundation in the fields of agriculture, will be joining us as full professors in augural AWM-Microsoft Research prize in chemistry, mathematics, medicine, physics, Alumni , faculty, students, friends, connect with us, write to us at September. Algebra and Number Theory, Peter Sarnak and the arts. The award will be presented Our finishing graduate students did very won the Wolf Prize, and Yasha Sinai the by Israeli President Shimon Peres on June [email protected] well on the job market with four win- Abel Prize. 1st at the Knesset. ning NSF postdoctoral fellowships. Andy The upcoming International Congress of Other Princeton current and past faculty- Manion and Owen Biesel won departmen- Mathematicians in Seoul, Korea will be who received the prize are: John Milnor tal graduate student teaching awards, and well represented by Princeton faculty. (1989), Andrew Wiles (1995), Yakov Sinai Jon Fickenscher and Luc Nguyen won the Manjul Bhargava, János Kollár and Fernan- (1996), and Elias Stein (1999). inaugural junior faculty teaching awards for do Coda Marques will be plenary speak- their excellent work as instructors. Gradu- ers, and Mihalis Dafermos, Sasha Sodin For the full citation, go to: www.wolffund.org.il ate student Tom Beck won a teaching award and Mark Braverman (Computer Science) from the Graduate School. will be invited sectional speakers. Mihalis Adam Levine and Benoît Pausader joined is one of very few invited to speak in two The happy participants in the new course, History of Mathematics, introduced in the fall of 2013, and taught by Michael Barany and Christopher Skinner. us as assistant professors this year, with sections (PDEs and Mathematical Physics). Benoît winning a Sloan Foundation fel- Sasha and Mark will be respectively speak- lowship. Tasho Kaletha also became a new ing in mathematical physics and theoretical assistant professor, being promoted from computer science. The Abel Math and music: our annual recital Veblen Research Instructor. Ana Caraiani We initiated the Minerva Distinguished and Florian Sprung joined us as Veblen In- Visitor program, welcoming back Andre Prize for structors. Javier Gómez Serrano and Steve Okounkov from Columbia, who gave a se- Yakov Thanks to the efforts of our Graduate This year’s performers were: Sivek joined us as instructors, and Jonathan Administrator, Jill LeClair, the members ries of 10 lectures. We thank the Fernholz Sinai Tim Brown (piano) Kommemi as an NSF postdoctoral research Foundation for making this possible. of our department and their friends and fellow. Assistant Professor Sucharit Sarkar Laurent Côté ’14 (violin) The Abel Prize, established in 2001 by the families had the opportunity to enjoy was awarded an NSF Career Grant. I’d like to thank Bob and Luisa Fernholz, Norwegian government and named after another delightful afternoon of music. Matthew de Courcy-Ireland, graduate the Class of 1971, Wei-Tong Shu, and the The Department has had excellent rela- Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik The recital took place on May 8 in Taplin student (piano) Arnold and Lukens families for their very Abel (1802-1829) is presented annually by tions with the Institute for Advanced Study. generous support. Auditorium and was followed, as usual, by Mark McConnell, lecturer, (baritone) Its faculty frequently give courses and the King of Norway to one or more out- a well attended reception in the Common Being surrounded by exceptional col- Isabelle Nogues ’15 (violin) advise our graduate students. To formalize standing mathematicians.The six million Room. this connection, Jean Bourgain, Helmut leagues totally committed to their re- Norwegian krones prize will be awarded to Florian Sprung, Veblen instructor (ban- Many thanks also to our musicians, who Hofer, Robert MacPherson and Richard search, mentoring and teaching missions, Sinai at a special ceremony in Oslo on May doneón) Jill LeClair took time to prepare and play for us Taylor were named Visiting Lecturers with immensely talented graduate students 20th, in recognition of his status as one of despite the demands of thesis writing and Ryan Peckner, graduate student (piano) Rank of Professor. playfully pushing themselves mathemati- the most influential mathematicians of the cally, and very gifted undergraduates trying 20th century and for his “fundamental con- approaching exams. Feng Zhu ’14 (piano) Essential to the functioning of the Depart- to figure out how they will change the tributions to dynamical systems, ergodic and ment is having excellent staff members. world is both an awesome and humbling theory, and mathematical physics.” Following careful searches we welcomed experience. Join us next year in the Minh-Tam Trinh ’14 (piano) For the full citation, go to: www.abelprize.no Ben Rose (from Computer Science) as our David Gabai *77, *80, Chair audience or on stage! new systems manager, Michelle Matel as [email protected] Faculty appointments Recent Ph .D.s Our most recent Ph.Ds after Princeton went their advisors, theirthesesand wherethey Assistant Professors Instructors Boris Alexeev Sung-Jin Oh J. Conway S. Klainerman An assortment of results in Finite energy global well-posedness of the Adam Levine Antonio Ache Steven Sivek combinatorics and compressed sensing. (3+1)-dimensional Yang-Mills equations Topology (specifically: the study of proper- Conformal Geometry, Differential Low-dimensional Topology (with a special Voleon Capital Management, CA, using a novel Yang-Mills heat flow gauge. ties and applications of Heegaard Floer Geometry, Partial Differential Equations. focus on contact and symplectic geometry, Senior Research Scientist. UC Berkeley-Miller Institute, Postdoc. homology). Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison Floer homology theories, and knot theory.) Ali Altug Nicolas Reichert Ph.D. (2010); M.Phil. (2008); M.A. (2012); B.S., Universidad Simón Bolívar, Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technol- P. Sarnak A. Chang Caracas, Venezuela (2005). ogy (2011); S.B. in Computer Science and Analysis experiments with the trace Some results on a full nonlinear equation (2006), Columbia University; A.B. magna National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Engineering, MIT (2006). National Science formula. Columbia University, Postdoc. in Conformal Geometry. University of cum laude, Harvard University (2005). Research Fellow, 2012-2014; Postdoctoral Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Washington, Acting Assistant Professor. National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Owen Biesel Research Fellow/NSF Postdoctoral Fellow, 2012-2015; Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard M. Bhargava Rodolfo Rios Zertuche Research Fellow, 2010-2013. Princeton University (2012-2013). University (2011-2013). Galois closures for rings. Leiden A. Okounkov Lecturer/NSF Postdoctoral Fellow, University, Postdoc. Near-involutions, the Pillowcase Brandeis University (2012-2013). Distribution, and Quadratic Differentials. Yaim Cooper Princeton University, Lecturer; Fall ’13: R. Pandharipande Brown University-ICERM; 2014: Max The geometry of stable quotients in genus Planck Institute for Mathematics, Postdoc. one. Harvard University, NSF Postdoc. Samuel Ruth Gabriele DiCerbo M. Bhargava J. Kollár A bound on the average rank of Effectiveness boundedness results in j-Invariant zero elliptic curves. Princeton algebraic and analytic geometry. Columbia University, Lecturer; Bloomberg, NY, University, Postdoc. Software Engineer. Mohammad Farajzadeh Tehrani Giulia Saccà G. Tian G. Tian On moduli spaces of real curves in Fibrations in Abelian varieties associated symplectic manifolds. Cornell University, to Enriques surfaces. SUNY/Stony Brook, Visiting Assistant Professor. Postdoc. Kevin Hughes Arul Shankar E. Stein M. Bhargava Arithmetic analogues in harmonic analysis: Geometry of numbers methods for global Results related to Waring’s problem. fields. IAS, Member (1 year); Harvard Benoit Pausader Javier Gómez Serrano administrative positions 2013-2014 University of Edinburgh, Postdoc. University, Postdoc. Philip Isett Analysis (partial differential equations Analysis. Hydrodynamics of Incompressible Daniel Shenfeld S, Klainerman and their interactions with physics and Fluids. A. Okounkov Chair: David Gabai Hölder continuous Euler flows with Abelianization of stable envelopes in geometry). Ph.D., Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Associate Chair: János Kollár compact support in time. MIT, C.L.E. symplectic resolutions. GNS Healthcare, Chargé de recherche, CNRS, U. Paris 13 (2013); M.S.,