Mathematics People stipulated that the income should provide a prize for Scholze Awarded Ostrowski outstanding recent achievements in pure mathematics and Prize the foundations of numerical mathematics. Peter Scholze of the —From an Ostrowski Foundation announcement University of Bonn has been awarded the Os- trowski Prize for 2015 2015 Henri Poincaré Prizes “for his breakthrough work in arithmetic al- Awarded gebraic geometry.” The prize carries a cash The International Association of Mathematical Physics award of 100,000 Swiss (IAMP) has awarded the 2015 Henri Poincaré Prizes for francs (approximately mathematical physics to Thomas Spencer of the Insti- US$109,000). tute for Advanced Study, Princeton; Herbert Spohn of According to the Technische Universität München; and Alexei Borodin of prize citation, Scholze the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Spencer was ©Astrid Slizewski/Uni Bonn. honored “for his seminal contributions to the theory of Peter Scholze was honored “for devel- oping the theory of per- phase transitions, the theory of disordered systems, and fectoid spaces and successfully applying the theory to constructive quantum field theory, including his proofs of address a number of difficult open questions. This theory the existences of broken symmetry phases and Anderson allows one to reduce problems about algebraic varieties localization, and his use of novel supersymmetry meth- over rings of mixed characteristic to problems about alge- ods.” Spohn was honored “for his seminal contributions to braic varieties over rings in a fixed positive characteristic. the theory of transitions from microscopic to macroscopic Scholze proved Deligne’s weight monodromy conjecture physics, including his derivation of kinetic and diffusive for varieties that are nonsingular complete intersections behavior from classical and quantum systems, and his in projective space using the theory of perfectoid spaces. work on the fluctuation behavior of surface growth mod- This represents the first major progress in the last thirty els.” Borodin was honored “for his seminal contributions years towards Deligne’s conjecture. He has also used to the theory of big groups, to determinantal processes perfectoid spaces to establish p-adic Hodge theory for and most notably to the elucidation of Macdonald pro- rigid analytic spaces. Further with Weinstein, he showed cesses, which have important applications to the statistical that Rapoport-Zink spaces at infinite level are perfectoid physics of directed polymers, tiling models and random spaces. By studying these spaces they [were] able to [re- surfaces.” prove] and generalize the Gross-Hopkins conjecture. The Henri Poincaré Prize, which is sponsored by the Scholze has also used the theory of perfectoid spaces to Daniel Iagolnitzer Foundation, recognizes outstand- establish the existence of Galois representations associ- ing contributions that lay the groundwork for novel ated with the mod p cohomology of the locally symmetric developments in mathematical physics. It also recognizes spaces for GLn over a totally real or CM field. In so doing and supports young people of exceptional promise who he resolved conjectures of Ash, Grunewald, and others have already made outstanding contributions to the field. which had resisted attack for forty years.” The prize is awarded every three years at the International Peter Scholze received his PhD in 2012 from the Uni- Congress on Mathematical Physics. This year's prizes were versity of Bonn. He currently holds the Hausdorff Chair awarded on July 27, 2015, in Santiago de Chile. For prior at the university. He is a fellow of the Clay Mathematics winners, selection committee members and laudations, see Institute. His honors include the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize www.iamp.org/page.php?page=page_prize_poincare. (2013), the Clay Research Award (2014), and the Cole Prize in Algebra (2015). —Announcement of the IAMP The ceremony for the Ostrowski Prize will be held in Copenhagen on October 30, 2015. About the Prize Babai Awarded Knuth Prize The Ostrowski Foundation was created by Alexander László Babai of the University of Chicago has been Ostrowski, for many years a professor at the University awarded the Donald E. Knuth Prize of the Association for of Basel. He left his entire estate to the foundation and Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on 958 NOTICES OF THE AMS VOLUmE 62, NUmBER 8 Mathematics People Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT) and IEEE Computer Society's Technical Committee on the Math- Ghys Receives Clay Award for ematical Foundations of Computing (TCMF) “for his Dissemination fundamental contributions to algorithm design and computational complexity, including pioneering a new Etienne Ghys of École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, has understanding of the notion of mathematical proof.” Ac- been selected as the recipient of the first Clay Award cording to the prize citation, Babai was recognized “for for Dissemination of Mathematical Knowledge for his his many visionary contributions, which have transformed “important contributions to mathematical research and the landscape of computing theory. He led the way in for his distinguished work in the promotion of math- combining interaction and randomness to broaden the ematics.” He has spoken before audiences “ranging from millennia-old concept of mathematical proof. His work schoolchildren to delegates at the International Congress on the power of interactive proofs with multiple prov- in 2006,” according to the prize citation. As editor of Im- ers led to the discovery of the fundamental implications ages des mathématiques, he transformed it into an online of the hardness of approximately solving optimization publication that has received more than five million visits. problems. The methods for interactive proofs introduced He is a cofounder of an international summer school in mathematics for young people and has coproduced a se- by him and his co-authors also became a foundation for ries of films for DVD and online in many languages. He is the development of locally testable codes and the study a member of the French Academy of Sciences and was a of property testing.” member of the program committee for the International The Knuth Prize carries a cash award of US$5,000. It is Congress of Mathematicians in Hyderabad and of the named in honor of Donald Knuth of Stanford University, Fields Medal Committee in 2014. who has been called the “father” of the analysis of algo- rithms. The award recognizes outstanding contributions —From a Clay Mathematics Institute announcement to the foundations of computer science by individuals for their overall impact in the field over an extended period. —From an ACM announcement Awards of the AWM The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) has made several awards for 2015. Spielman and Teng Awarded Erica N. Walker of Columbia University has been named the Etta Z. Falconer Lecturer of the AWM and the Gödel Prize Mathematical Association of America (MAA). Walker holds an EdD in administration, planning, and social policy and Daniel A. Spielman of Yale University and Shang-Hua a PhD in education, both from Harvard University. Her Teng of the University of Southern California have been research involves social and cultural factors and educa- awarded the 2015 Gödel Prize of the Association for tional policies and practices that facilitate engagement, Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on learning, and performance in mathematics, especially for Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT), together underserved students. She collaborates with teachers, with the European Association for Theoretical Computer schools, districts, and organizations to promote math- Science (EATCS), for “improvements in the running time ematics excellence and equity among young people. She for core problems in algorithmic graph theory.” Accord- has authored or coauthored more than twenty-five articles ing to the prize citation, Spielman and Teng were honored and book chapters, as well as two books. Her prize lecture, for their work addressing “the challenge of improving the titled “A Multiplicity All At Once: Mathematics for Every- efficiency of graph algorithms. Their result delivered a one, Everywhere,” was delivered at the MAA Mathfest in new, extremely powerful algorithmic primitive or basic Washington, DC, in August 2015. building block—nearly linear time electrical flow com- Daniela De Silva of Barnard College has been awarded putations—which resolved an outstanding problem in the 2016 AWM-Sadosky Research Prize in Analysis “in numerical linear algebra. Their approach has been used to recognition of her fundamental contributions to the regu- obtain substantial improvements in the running time for larity theory of nonlinear elliptic partial differential equa- several core problems in algorithmic graph theory, which tions (PDE) and nonlocal integro-differential equations.” are used to model real-world problems.” She received her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute The Gödel Prize carries a cash award of US$5,000. It of Technology in 2005. The prize recognizes exceptional is named in honor of Kurt Gödel, whose work has had research in analysis by a woman early in her career. immense impact upon scientific and philosophical think- Lauren Williams of the University of California ing in the twentieth century. The prize recognizes major Berkeley has been selected to receive the AWM-Microsoft contributions to mathematical logic and the foundations Research Prize in