2007 Clay Research Awards Announced
April 17, 2007
CAMBRIDGE, MA -The Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI) presents the Clay Reseach Award annually to recognize major mathematical breakthroughs. Awardees receive the bronze sculpture "Figureight Knot Complement vii/CMI" by Helaman Ferguson and one year of flexible research support.
Because the Institute's annual meeting has been changed from the fall to the spring, CMI presents three awards this year. The recipients are: Alex Eskin (University of Chicago), Christopher Hacon and James McKernan (University of Utah and UC Santa Barbara, respectivey) and Michael Harris and Richard Taylor (Université de Paris VII and Harvard University, respectively).
Previous recipients, in reverse chronological order are: Manjul Bhargava, Nils Dencker, Ben Green, Gérard Laumon, Bao-Châu Ngô, Richard Hamilton, Terence Tao, Oded Schramm, Manindra Agrawal, Edward Witten, Stanislav Smirnov, Alain Connes, Laurent Lafforgue, and Andrew Wiles.
The awards will be presented in conjunction with the Clay Research Conference, to be held May 14-15 in Lecture Hall C of the Harvard Science Center. The aim of the conference is to present outstanding exposition of recent research progress. This year's speakers are Alessio Corti, Shigefumi Mori, Alex Eskin, David Fisher, Mark Kisin, Curtis McMullen, Peter Ozsváth, Richard Taylor, and William Thurston.
Alex Eskin
For his work on rational billiards and geometric group theory, in particular, his crucial contribution to joint work with David Fisher and Kevin Whyte establishing the quasi-isometric rigidity of sol.
Christopher Hacon and James McKernan
For their work in advancing our understanding of the birational geometry of algebraic varieties in dimension greater than three, in particular, for their inductive proof of the existence of flips.
Michael Harris and Richard Taylor
For their work on local and global Galois representations, partly in collaboration with Clozel and Shepherd-Barron, culminating in the solution of the Sato-Tate conjecture for elliptic curves with non-integral j-invariants.
CMI
The Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI) is a private, non-profit foundation based in Harvard Square which is dedicated to increasing and disseminating mathematical knowledge. CMI aims to further the recognition of the beauty, power and universality of mathematical thought. Its programs include an annual summer school, conferences and workshops, public lectures, programs for talented high school students, and support for individual researchers, notably the Clay Research Fellows and Clay Senior Scholars. Please see www.claymath.org. Contact: James Carlson, President, or David Ellwood, Research Director. (617) 995 2600, Email: carlson@claymath.org; ellwood@claymath.org
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