News Release
MAZUR RECEIVES
AMS STEELE PRIZE
Contact at AMS: Dr. John H. Ewing,
AMS Executive Director
e-mail: jhe@ams.org
telephone: 401-455-4100
fax: 401-331-3842
January 20, 2000
PROVIDENCE, RI --- Barry Mazur of Harvard University has won
the 2000 Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research. Presented
by the American Mathematical Society, the Steele Prize is one of the highest
distinctions in mathematics. The prize will be awarded at the Joint
Mathematics Meetings in Washington, DC on January 20, 2000.
The citation for the award singled out Mazur's landmark paper "Modular Curves
and the Eisenstein Ideal," which appeared in Publications Mathematiques de
l'Insitut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (no. 47 (1978), 33-186). This paper
presented fundamental results in the theory of elliptic curves, a central
ingredient in modern number theory, and also laid the foundation for many of
the most important results in arithmetic algebraic geometry over the last 20
years, including the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. The prize citation states,
"Rarely has a single paper given rise to such a wealth of important mathematics
as has Mazur's paper."
Founded in 1888 to further mathematical research and scholarship, the
30,000-member American Mathematical Society fulfills its mission through
programs and services that promote mathematical research and its uses,
strengthen mathematical education, and foster awareness and appreciation of
mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and to everyday life.
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