Wikipedia

Sylvester Medal

The Sylvester Medal is a bronze medal awarded by the Royal Society for the encouragement of mathematical research, and accompanied by a £1,000 prize.[2] It was named in honour of James Joseph Sylvester, the Savilian Professor of Geometry at the University of Oxford in the 1880s, and first awarded in 1901, having been suggested by a group of Sylvester's friends (primarily Raphael Meldola) after his death in 1897.[3][4] Initially awarded every three years with a prize of around £900,[3][5] the Royal Society have announced that starting in 2009 it will be awarded every two years instead, and is to be aimed at 'early to mid career stage scientist' rather than an established mathematician.[2] The award winner is chosen by the Society's A-side awards committee, which handles physical rather than biological science awards.

Sylvester Medal
Refer to caption
James Joseph Sylvester, after whom the award is named
Awarded for"outstanding contributions in the field of mathematics"[1]
Date1901 (1901)
Country United Kingdom
Presented byRoyal Society
Websitehttps://royalsociety.org/medals-and-prizes/sylvester-medal/

As of 2021, 45 medals have been awarded, of which all but 10 have been awarded to citizens of the United Kingdom, two to citizens of France and United States, and one medal each has been won by citizens of New Zealand, Germany, Austria, Russia, Italy, Sweden and South Africa. As of 2021 three women have won the medal, Mary Cartwright in 1964, Dusa McDuff in 2018, and Frances Kirwan in 2021.

List of recipients

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List of recipients of the Sylvester Medal
Year Portrait Name Nationality Rationale Notes
1901   Henri Poincaré   French "For his many and important contributions to mathematical science." [6]
1904   Georg Cantor   German "For his researches in the theories of aggregates and of sets of points of the arithmetic continuum, of transfinite numbers, and Fourier's series." [7]
1907   Wilhelm Wirtinger   Austrian "For his contributions to the general theory of functions." [8]
1910   Henry Frederick Baker   British "For his researches in the theory of Abelian functions and for his edition of Sylvester's 'Collected Works'" [9]
1913   James Whitbread Lee Glaisher   British "For his mathematical researches." [10]
1916   Jean Gaston Darboux   French "For his contributions to mathematical science." [11]
1919   Percy Alexander MacMahon   British "For his researches in pure mathematics, especially in connection with the partition of numbers and analysis" [12]
1922   Tullio Levi-Civita   Italian "For his researches in geometry and mechanics" [13][14]
1925   Alfred North Whitehead   British "For his researches on the foundations of mathematics" [15]
1928   William Henry Young   British "For his contributions to the theory of functions of a real variable" [16][17]
1931   Edmund Taylor Whittaker   British "For his original contributions to both pure and applied mathematics" [18]
1934   Bertrand Russell   British "For his distinguished work on the foundations of mathematics" [19][20]
1937   Augustus Edward Hough Love   British "In recognition of his researches in classical mathematical physics" [21]
1940   Godfrey Harold Hardy   British "For his important contributions to many branches of pure mathematics." [22]
1943   John Edensor Littlewood   British "For his mathematical discoveries and supreme insight in the analytical theory of numbers." [23]
1946 — George Neville Watson   British "For his distinguished contributions to pure mathematics in the field of mathematical analysis and in particular for his work on asymptotic expansion and on general transforms. [24]
1949   Louis Joel Mordell   British "For his distinguished researches in pure mathematics, especially for his discoveries in the theory of numbers." [25]
1952 — Abram Samoilovitch Besicovitch   Russian "For his outstanding work on almost-periodic functions, the theory of measure and integration and many other topics of theory of functions." [26]
1955 — Edward Charles Titchmarsh   British "For his distinguished researches on the Riemann zeta-function, analytical theory of numbers, Fourier analysis, and eigenfunction expansions." [27]
1958   Max Newman   British "for his distinguished contributions to combinatory topology, Boolean algebras and mathematical logic." [28]
1961   Philip Hall   British "For his distinguished researches in algebra." [29]
1964   Mary Cartwright   British "For her distinguished contributions to analysis and the theory of functions of a real and complex variable." [30]
1967   Harold Davenport   British "For his many distinguished contributions to the theory of numbers." [31]
1970 — George Frederick James Temple   British "For his many distinguished contributions to applied mathematics, especially in his work on distribution theory." [32]
1973 — John William Scott Cassels   British "For his numerous important contributions to the theory of numbers." [33]
1976   David George Kendall   British "For his many distinguished contributions to probability theory and its applications." [34]
1979   Graham Higman   British "For his distinguished and profoundly influential contributions to the theory of finite and infinite groups. [35]
1982   John Frank Adams   British "For his solution of several outstanding problems of algebraic topology and of the methods he invented for this purpose which have proved of prime importance in the theory of the subject." [36]
1985   John Griggs Thompson   American "For his fundamental contributions leading to the complete classification of all finite simple groups." [37]
1988   Charles T. C. Wall   British "For his contributions to the topology of manifolds and related topics in algebra and geometry." [38][39]
1991   Klaus Friedrich Roth   British "For his many contributions to number theory and in particular his solution of the famous problem concerning approximating algebraic numbers by rationals." [40][41]
1994 — Peter Whittle   New Zealander "For his major distinctive contributions to time series analysis, to optimisation theory, and to a wide range of topics in applied probability theory and the mathematics of operational research." [42][43]
1997   Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter   British
  Canadian		 "For his achievements in geometry, notably projective geometry, non-euclidean geometry and the analysis of spatial shapes and patterns, and for his substantial contributions to practical group-theory which pervade much modern mathematics." [44][45]
2000   Nigel James Hitchin   British "For his important contributions to many parts of differential geometry combining this with complex geometry, integrable systems and mathematical physics interweaving the most modern ideas with the classical literature." [46]
2003   Lennart Carleson   Swedish "For his deep and fundamental contributions to mathematics in the field of analysis and complex dynamics." [47]
2006   Peter Swinnerton-Dyer   British "For his fundamental work in arithmetic geometry and his many contributions to the theory of ordinary differential equations." [48][49]
2009   John M. Ball   British "For his seminal work in mechanics and nonlinear analysis and his encouragement of mathematical research in developing countries." [50][51]
2010   Graeme Segal   British "For his highly influential and elegant work on the development of topology, geometry and quantum field theory, bridging the gap between physics and pure mathematics." [52]
2012 — John Francis Toland   British
  Irish		 "For his original theorems and remarkable discoveries in nonlinear partial differential equations, including applications to water waves." [53][54]
2014   Ben Green   British "For his famous result on primes in arithmetic progression, and his subsequent proofs of a number of spectacular theorems over the last five to ten years." [55][56]
2016   Timothy Gowers   British "For his groundbreaking results in the theory of Banach spaces, pure combinatorics, and additive number theory." [57]
2018   Dusa McDuff   British "For leading the development of the new field of symplectic geometry and topology." [58]
2019   Peter Sarnak   American
  South African		 "For transformational contributions across number theory, combinatorics, analysis and geometry." [59]
2020   Bryan John Birch   British "For driving the theory of elliptic curves, through the Birch-Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture and the theory of Heegner points." [60]
2021   Frances Kirwan   British "For her research on quotients in algebraic geometry, including links with symplectic geometry and topology, which has had many applications." [61]
2022   Roger Heath-Brown   British "For his many important contributions to the study of prime numbers and solutions to equations in integers." [62]
2023   Miles Reid   British "For his exceptionally creative research and fundamental insights into higher-dimensional algebraic geometry, in particular the minimal model program for 3-folds, and for untiring work for the community of algebraic geometers." [63]

See also

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References

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