Mathematics People the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize are Manjul Bhargava and Holowinsky Awarded 2011 Kannan Soundararajan (2005), Terence Tao (2006), Ben Sastra Ramanujan Prize Green (2007), Akshay Venkatesh (2008), Kathrin Bring- mann (2009), and Wei Zhang (2010). Roman Holowinsky of Ohio State University has been awarded the 2011 SASTRA Ramanujan Prize. This annual —Krishnaswami Alladi prize is awarded for outstanding contributions to areas influenced by the Indian genius Srinivasa Ramanujan. The age limit for the prize has been set at thirty-two because Sheffield Awarded 2011 Ramanujan achieved so much in his brief life of thirty-two years. The prize carries a cash award of US$10,000. Loève Prize The prize citation reads as follows: “Roman Holowinsky Scott Sheffield of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- is awarded the 2011 SASTRA Ramanujan Prize for his nology has been awarded the 2011 Line and Michel Loève spectacular work in analytic number theory and the theory of modular forms—contributions that have significant International Prize in Probability. The prize, which carries implications in a broad range of areas in mathematics and a monetary award of US$30,000, will be presented at a even in physics. The prize recognizes his seminal paper forthcoming ceremony in Berkeley. with Kannan Soundararajan in the Annals of Mathematics Sheffield received his Ph.D. in 2003, advised by Amir in 2010, which resolved the well-known quantum unique Dembo at Stanford University. Much of his research has ergodicity (QUE) conjecture of Zeev Rudnick and Peter Sar- been devoted to development of the theory of the Schramm– nak in the important case of holomorphic modular forms, Loewner evolution (SLE(κ)) and its connections with other and his paper on sieve methods and shifted convolution processes. His early result that the harmonic explorer sums in the Duke Mathematical Journal in 2009 which rescales to SLE(4) as the grid gets finer remains one of developed techniques that were crucial to the final resolu- the most intuitive ways to see how SLE arises as a limit tion of the QUE conjecture in the holomorphic case. The of discrete processes. His work “Gaussian Free Fields prize notes that the origins of his work go back to his 2006 (GFF) for Mathematicians” explained how GFFs arise as Ph.D. thesis on shifted convolution sums and quantum the limit of many incrementally varying random func- unique ergodicity. The prize also recognizes his related tions on d-dimensional grids and started development of work on sieving for mass equidistribution that appeared connections between the GFF and SLE. This theme was in the Annals of Mathematics in 2010 and his joint paper continued in subsequent works, in particular proving (with with Valentin Blomer on bounding sup-norms of cusp Oded Schramm) that the chordal level lines of the GFF have forms of large level in Inventiones Mathematicae in 2009. scaling limits that are variants of SLE(4). The QUE conjecture was motivated by investigations in He introduced the topic of conformal loop ensembles physics on quantum correspondence in chaotic systems, CLE(κ), using branching variants of SLE(κ) called explora- and the prize recognizes his research as a fine example tion trees. CLEs are random collections of loops in a planar of great mathematical work of lasting value inspired by a domain characterized by certain conformal invariance and problem in physics.” Markov properties and conjectured to be scaling limits Roman Holowinsky was born on July 26, 1979. He ob- of various random loop models from statistical physics. tained a B.S. degree from Rutgers University in 2001. He Subsequent work with Wendelin Werner produced a deep continued at Rutgers to do his doctorate and received his analysis of CLEs and their relation to two-dimensional Ph.D. in 2006 under the direction of Henryk Iwaniec. He Brownian loop-soup. In particular, they showed that the held postdoctoral visiting positions at the Institute for simple CLEs constructed above for 8/3<κ≤ 4 coincide with Advanced Studies in 2006–2007 and in 2009–2010, at the the outer-cluster-boundary ensembles of Brownian loop- Fields Institute in 2008, and at the University of Toronto in soups and are the only random loop ensembles satisfying 2007–2009 before joining the permanent faculty at Ohio certain conformal restriction axioms. State University. He received an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Another line of work, in part with Bertrand Duplantier, Fellowship in 2011. At the age of thirty-two, Holowinsky shows that certain interfaces between Liouville quantum is a major figure in the fields of analytic number theory gravity random surfaces have SLE descriptions. This work and the theory of modular forms. makes rigorous in this setting the KPZ relation between The 2011 SASTRA Ramanujan Prize Committee con- scaling exponents in a Euclidean planar domain and in sisted of Krishnaswami Alladi (chair), Frits Beukers, Liouville quantum gravity. Benedict Gross, Christian Krattenthaler, Ken Ono, Robert He has also made substantial contributions in two quite Vaughan, and Akshay Venkatesh. Previous recipients of separate fields. The first involves dimer models, spanning 60 NOTICES OF THE AMS VOLUME 59, NUMBER 1 Mathematics People trees, and tilings; the second involves game theory, PDEs, their commitment to community service as demonstrated and Lipschitz extension theory. through scientific leadership, public education, or com- The Loève Prize commemorates Michel Loève, professor munity outreach. Each awardee receives a five-year grant at the University of California Berkeley from 1948 until his to further his or her research and educational efforts. untimely death in 1979. The prize was established by his widow, Line, shortly before her death in 1992. Awarded —From a White House announcement every two years, it is intended to recognize outstanding contributions by researchers in probability who are under forty-five years old. Prizes of the Australian —David Aldous, University of California Berkeley Mathematical Society The Australian Mathematical Society has awarded several Christiansen Awarded First major prizes for 2011. Todd Oliynyk of Monash Uni- versity was awarded the Australian Mathematical Society Smale Prize Medal. His work involves partial differential equations: singular limits of symmetric hyperbolic systems and Snorre H. Christiansen of the University of Oslo has geometric PDEs; general relativity: Newtonian limit, post- been named the first recipient of the Stephen Smale Prize Newtonian expansions, Einstein–Yang–Mills, gravitating of the Society for the Foundations of Computational Math- perfect fluids and elastic bodies; and geometric flows: ematics (FoCM). Ricci flow and renormalization group flow. The medal is Christiansen was honored for his pioneering work on awarded to a member of the Society under the age of forty the foundation of computational mathematics. The prize for distinguished research in the mathematical sciences. A citation reads: “Christiansen is an original and insightful significant portion of the research work should be carried researcher working on computational problems at the out in Australia. interface between pure and applied mathematics. Most of Frances Y. Kuo of the University of New South Wales his work is motivated by the design of numerical meth- was awarded the J. H. Michell Medal for outstanding new ods for various equations arising in physics, and he has researchers by ANZIAM (Australia and New Zealand In- made substantial contributions to a number of key areas dustrial and Applied Mathematics division). According related to modern scientific computing. In particular, we to the citation, “she is a recognized leader in the theory will mention his use of Calderòn’s formulas to construct and applications of high-dimensional integration and ap- preconditioners for the electric field equations, his con- proximation, Monte Carlo methods and information-based tributions to the development of finite element exterior complexity, interested in applications in finance, statistics calculus, and his convergence results for lattice gauge and porous media flow.” theory. Through his work Christiansen has given many Peter Sarnak of the Institute for Advanced Study has examples on how various topics from pure mathematics, been awarded the Mahler Lectureship. According to the such as homological algebra and algebraic topology, can citation, “he has made major contributions to number be used as crucial tools for developing and understanding theory and to questions in analysis motivated by number computational procedures.” theory. His research focuses on the theory of zeta func- The goal of the Smale Prize is to recognize major tions and automorphic forms with applications to number achievements in furthering the understanding of the theory, combinatorics, and mathematical physics.” The connections between mathematics and computation, prize is awarded every two years to a distinguished math- including the interfaces between pure and applied math- ematician who preferably works in an area of mathematics ematics, numerical analysis, and computer science. It will associated with the work of Kurt Mahler. be awarded every three years to coincide with the FoCM meeting. —From an Australian Mathematical Society announcement —From a FoCM announcement PECASE Awards Announced Royal Society of Canada Elections Mathematicians Amit Singer of Princeton University and Maria G. Westdickenberg of the Georgia Institute of The Royal Society of Canada has elected three new