Mathematics People Kleinberg Receives MacArthur NSF CAREER Awards Made Fellowship The Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS) of the National Science Foundation (NSF) has honored fourteen mathe- JON KLEINBERG of Cornell University has been awarded a maticians in fiscal year 2005 with Faculty Early Career De- MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for 2005. The prize velopment (CAREER) awards. The NSF established the citation calls Kleinberg “a computer scientist with a awards to support promising scientists, mathematicians, reputation for tackling important, practical problems and engineers who are committed to the integration of and, in the process, deriving deep mathematical insights.” research and education. The grants run from four to five Kleinberg’s research interests range from computer years and range from US$200,000 to US$500,000 each. The networking analysis and routing to data mining to com- 2005 CAREER grant awardees and the titles of their grant parative genomics and protein structure. He is best known projects follow. for his contributions to two aspects of network theory: MARK EMBREE, Rice University: Design and Analysis of “small worlds” and searching the World Wide Web. Restarted Iterative Methods for Linear Systems, Eigen- The “small world” concept, originated by psychologist value Problems, and Model Reduction; EZRA MILLER, Uni- Stanley Milgram, states that any two people are linked versity of Minnesota, Twin Cities: Discrete Structures in by a relatively small number of connections among Continuous Contexts; DAVID BEN-ZVI, University of Texas, mutual acquaintances. Kleinberg extended this concept Austin: Representation Theory on Curves; HELGE JENSSEN, by introducing the notion of navigability—essentially, the information structure of the network necessary for Pennsylvania State University: Large and Multidimensional individuals to make distant connections efficiently based Solutions of Conservation Laws; PETER KRAMER, Rensselaer solely on local information. He proved that, although Polytechnic Institute: Stochastic Dynamical Models in Mi- certain architectures can be computationally efficient, no crobiology; JONATHAN MATTINGLY, Duke University: Stochastic algorithm can find the shortest path in networks with Analysis and Numerics in Partial Differential Equations and short, random connections. In addition, Kleinberg has Extended Dynamical Systems; TIEFENG JIANG, University of developed an algorithm for identifying the structure of Minnesota, Twin Cities: Random Matrices and Related website interactions; his algorithm distinguishes “author- Topics; ANNA VAINCHTEIN, University of Pittsburgh: Lattice ity” sites, which contain definitive information, from “hub” Models of Martensitic Phase Transitions; THOMAS SCANLON, sites, which refer to authority sites using hyperlinks. University of California, Berkeley: Geometric and Alge- Jon Kleinberg received his A.B. (1993) from Cornell braic Model Theory; MATTIAS JONSSON, University of Michi- University and his Ph.D. (1996) from the Massachusetts gan, Ann Arbor: A Unified Study of Singularities; SAMUEL Institute of Technology. He has held several research KOU, Harvard University: Stochastic Modeling and Inference positions at IBM and has continued to be a member of the in Biophysics; JORDAN ELLENBERG, University of Wisconsin, visiting faculty program at the IBM Almaden Research Madison: Rational Points on Varieties and Nonabelian Center since 1998. He has been at Cornell University since Galois Groups; WEI BIAO WU, University of Chicago: 1996. The MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Program Asymptotics of Random Processes and Their Applications; awards five-year, unrestricted fellowships of US$500,000 and YUHONG YANG, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities: to individuals across all ages and fields who show excep- Adaptive Regression for Dependent Data by Combining tional merit and promise of continued creative work. Different Procedures. —From a MacArthur Foundation news release —Elaine Kehoe 50 NOTICES OF THE AMS VOLUME 53, NUMBER 1 Mathematics People of these being his undergraduate research at the University Viana Awarded ICTP/IMU of Michigan, as well his Ph.D. thesis written under the Ramanujan Prize direction of Peter Sarnak of Princeton University, in which Soundararajan proved the spectacular result that more MARCELO VIANA of the Instituto de Matemática Pura e Apli- than 7/8-ths of quadratic Dirichlet L-functions have no cada (IMPA), Brazil, has been awarded the first Srinivasa Ra- zeros at the critical point s =1/2. The prize also recognizes manujan Prize for Young Mathematicians from Developing Soundararajan’s joint work with Brian Conrey that a positive Countries by the Abdus Salam International Centre for The- oretical Physics (ICTP) and the International Mathematical proportion of Dirichlet L-functions have no zeros on the Union (IMU). Viana was honored for his outstanding contri- real axis within the critical strip, his joint work with Ken butions to the field of dynamical systems. He has played a Ono providing a conditional proof of a conjecture of key role in the development of mathematics at IMPA and in Ramanujan on the values of a certain quadratic form, and Brazil. his recent work with Hugh Montgomery on the distribution The Ramanujan Prize is funded by the Niels Henrik Abel of primes in short intervals.” Memorial Fund and is designed to honor researchers under The prize was awarded at the International Conference forty-five years of age who have conducted outstanding on Number Theory and Mathematical Physics, held research in developing countries. The prize carries a cash December 19–22, 2005, at SASTRA. Both recipients gave award of US$10,000 and a travel allowance to visit ICTP to invited talks on their work. deliver a prize lecture. The SASTRA Ramanujan Prize carries a cash award of —From an ICTP announcement US$10,000 and is given for outstanding contributions by individuals under the age of thirty-two (the age Ramanu- jan was when he died) in areas of mathematics that were Bhargava and Soundararajan broadly influenced by Ramanujan’s work. The prize committee consisted of Krishnaswami Alladi Awarded SASTRA Ramanujan (chair), University of Florida; Manindra Agrawal, Indian Prizes Institute of Technology; George Andrews, Pennsylvania State University; Jean-Marc Deshouillers, University of Bor- MANJUL BHARGAVA of Princeton University and KANNAN deaux; Tom Koornwinder, University of Amsterdam; James SOUNDARARAJAN of the University of Michigan have been Lepowsky, Rutgers University; and Don Zagier, Max Planck awarded the first annual SASTRA Ramanujan Prizes of the Institute for Mathematics, Bonn, and Collège de France. Shanmugha Arts, Science, Technology Research Academy (SASTRA) of South India. —Krishnaswami Alladi, Chair, The prize citations are as follows. “Manjul Bhargava is awarded the 2005 SASTRA Ramanujan SASTRA Ramanujan Prize Committee Prize for his phenomenal contributions to number theory, most notably for his discovery of higher order composition laws, for applying these laws to solve new cases of one of the Bhargava and Dencker Receive fundamental questions of number theory, that of the as- ymptotic enumeration of number fields of a given Clay Awards degree d, and for making progress on the problem of find- The Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI) has presented its Clay ing the average size of ideal class groups of number fields Research Awards for 2005 to MANJUL BHARGAVA, Princeton and the related conjectures of Cohen and Lenstra. All this stems from his Ph.D. thesis written under the direction of An- University, and NILS DENCKER, Lund University, Sweden. Ac- drew Wiles of Princeton University and published as a series cording to the prize citations, Bhargava was recognized “for of papers in the Annals of Mathematics. Bhargava’s research his discovery of new composition laws for quadratic forms has created a whole new area of research in a classical topic and for his work on the average size of ideal class groups,” that has seen very little activity since the time of Gauss.” and Dencker was honored “for his complete resolution” “Kannan Soundararajan is awarded the 2005 SASTRA of a 1970 conjecture made by Treves and Nirenberg that Ramanujan Prize for his brilliant contributions to several “posits an essentially geometric necessary and sufficient areas in analytic number theory that include combinatorial condition…for a pseudodifferential operator of principal and multiplicative number theory, the Riemann zeta func- type to be locally solvable.” tion, Dirichlet L-functions, the analytic theory of automor- The CMI is a private nonprofit foundation dedicated to phic forms, and the Katz-Sarnak theory of symmetric groups associated with families of L-functions. Among other things, increasing and disseminating mathematical knowledge. the prize recognizes his resolution of a conjecture of Ron This year’s research awards were presented on October 11, Graham in combinatorial number theory in collaboration 2005, at Oxford University. with R. Balasubramaniam, his fundamental results on the distribution of zeros of the Riemann zeta function, both —From a CMI announcement JANUARY 2006 NOTICES OF THE AMS 51 Mathematics People Alfred W. Goldie (1920–2005) Alfred W. Goldie, whose eponymous theorem changed the face of noncommutative ring theory, died on October 8, 2005, in hospital, near his home in Bowness-on-Winder- mere, England. According to his family, his death was the result of a heart attack following surgery earlier that week. Goldie’s Theorem and its proof