SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMS AND ACTIVITIES

December 23, 2024

Centre de recherches mathematiques,
Fields Institute,
Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences

CRM-Fields-PIMS Prize Lecture
November 20, 2006 at 3: 30 p.m.

The CRM-Fields-PIMS prize is intended to be the premier mathematics prize in Canada. The winner receive a monetary award, and an invitation to present a lecture at each institute during the semester when the award is announced. The prize recognizes exceptional achievement in the mathematical sciences.

Audio and slides

Professor Nicole Tomczak-Jaegermann,
University of Alberta

High dimensional convex bodies: phenomena, intuitions and results.

Phenomena in large dimensions appear in a number of fields of mathematics and related fields of science, dealing with functions of infinitely growing number of variables and with objects that are determined by infinitely growing number of parameters. In this talk we trace these phenomena in linear-metric, geometric and some combinatorial structure of high-dimensional convex bodies. We shall concentrate this presentation on very recent results in Asymptotic Geometric Analysis.

 

MONTRÉAL, December 2005. The directors of the Centre de recherches mathématiques (CRM) of l'Université de Montréal - François Lalonde, the Fields Institute - Barbara Keyfitz, and the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences - Ivar Ekeland, are pleased to announce the awarding of the CRM-Fields-PIMS Prize for 2006 to Professor Nicole Tomczak-Jaegermann of the University of Alberta in recognition of her exceptional achievements in functional analysis and geometric analysis.

The prize was established in 1994 as the CRM-Fields prize to recognize exceptional research in the mathematical sciences. In 2005, PIMS became an equal partner and the name was changed to the CRM-Fields-PIMS prize. A committee appointed by the three institutes chooses the recipient.

Nicole Tomczak-Jaegermann, this year's recipient, is one of the world's leading mathematicians working in functional analysis. She has made outstanding contributions to infinite dimensional Banach space theory, asymptotic geometric analysis, and the interaction between these two streams of modern functional analysis. She is one of the few mathematicians who have contributed important results to both areas. In particular, her work constitutes an essential ingredient in a solution by the 1998 Fields Medallist W.T. Gowers of the homogeneous space problem raised by Banach in 1932.

Professor Tomczak-Jaegermann received her Master's (1968) and Ph.D. (1974) degrees from Warsaw University in Poland. She held a position at Warsaw University from 1975 to 1983 and was visiting professor at Texas A & M University during 1981-1983. In 1983 she moved to the University of Alberta where she holds a Canada Research Chair in Geometric Analysis. She gave an invited lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1998, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, received a Killam Research Fellowship, and the Krieger-Nelson Prize Lectureship of the Canadian Mathematical Society. She has served the Canadian research community in various ways including NSERC and CMS committees, the Canada Council Killam Research Fellowship Committee, the Canada Research Chairs College of Reviewers, as well as the Scientific Board of BIRS. She has also served as the University of Alberta Site Director of PIMS and as Associate Editor of the Canadian Journal of Mathematics and the Canadian Mathematical Bulletin.

A brief article commenting further on her work was published in the May 2006 issue of FieldsNotes. An expanded version is available here.


Previous recipients of the prize are H.S.M. (Donald) Coxeter, George A. Elliott, James Arthur, Robert V. Moody, Stephen A. Cook, Israel Michael Sigal, William T. Tutte, John B. Friedlander, John McKay, Edwin Perkins, Donald A. Dawson, and David Boyd.

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