comm-ostrowski.qxp 7/5/00 9:51 AM Page 885

Beilinson and Hofer Share Ostrowski Prize

ALEXANDER BEILINSON of the University of Chicago and HELMUT HOFER of the Courant Institute shared the 1999 Ostrowski Prize. The prize carries a mone- tary award of 150,000 Swiss francs (approximately $87,000) and two fellowships each of 30,000 Swiss francs. Helmut Hofer Beilinson received the Ostrowski Prize for Alexander Beilinson achievements in the areas of representation the- E. Zehnder, and others. Landmarks include the ory, arithmetic geometry, and modern mathemat- characterization of the 3-ball and the 3-sphere in ical physics. His proof with J. Bernstein of the dynamical terms, as well as a theorem about closed Jantzen conjectures for reductive Lie groups in- characteristics on strictly convex hypersurfaces volved the earlier development of D-modules and in symplectic 4-space. perverse sheaves in which he also played a key role. The Ostrowski Foundation was created by His conjectures and computations in K-theory con- Alexander Ostrowski, for many years a professor tinue to be very influential, as for example in his at the University of Basel. He left his entire estate motivic treatment of D. Zagier’s polylogarithm to the foundation and stipulated that the income conjectures in joint work with P. Deligne. And should provide a prize for outstanding recent Beilinson’s total rebuilding of the theory of vertex achievements in pure mathematics and the foun- operator algebras with V. Drinfeld contributes to dations of numerical mathematics. The prize is the understanding of two-dimensional conformal awarded every other year. Previous recipients of field theory and string theory and has further- the Ostrowski Prize are Louis de Branges, Jean more led to progress in the geometric Langlands Bourgain, Miklós Laczkovich, Marina Ratner, An- program. drew Wiles, Yuri Nesterenko, and Gilles Pisier. The Hofer received the Ostrowski Prize for several prize jury consists of representatives from the contributions to contact and symplectic geometry. universities of Basel, Jerusalem, and Waterloo, and His proof of the Weinstein conjecture for a wide from the academies of Denmark and the Nether- and significant class of 3-manifolds was not only lands. a breakthrough but also set in motion an extensive The 1999 prize was awarded on June 9, 2000, research program carried through by him in col- at the University of Basel. laboration with Y. Eliashberg, K. Wysocki, —From an Ostrowski Foundation news release

SEPTEMBER 2000 NOTICES OF THE AMS 885