Conant Prize

Date: 26 November 2018

Clay Research Fellow Alex Wright has been awarded the 2019 Levi L. Conant Prize for his article From rational billiards to dynamics on moduli spaces.  In only 16 pages, the article gives a panoramic view of the theory of translation surfaces and of the recent breakthrough by Alex Eskin, Maryam Mirzakhani, and Amir Mohammadi on the structure of the orbit closure of a translation surface. Wright’s account combines brevity with clarity. It is a considerable feat: this active and highly technical research area comprises the work of many. The article gives non-specialists a good entry point and a guide to further reading.