The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) presented the 2007 Ralph E. Kleinman Prize on May 28 to Springer author Salvatore Torquato. The prize was awarded at the biennial SIAM Conference on Dynamical Systems, held this year in Snowbird, Utah. The award consists of a framed, hand-calligraphed certificate and a $5,000 cash prize.
Dr. Torquato was awarded the Kleinman Prize for his many and deep contributions to the modeling, analysis and computational study of heterogeneous materials. His insights and contributions have bridged the gap between mathematics and applications in a way that only someone intimately familiar with both could provide. Salvatore Torquato is author of Random Heterogeneous Materials, published by Springer in 2001.
During the years from 1975 to 1977, Salvatore Torquato obtained his M.S. degree in mechanical engineering from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook and worked as a research scientist at Grumman Aerospace Corporation in Bethpage, NY. He received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering in 1981 from SUNY at Stony Brook. Dr. Torquato is currently Professor of Chemistry at the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials at Princeton University.
The Ralph E. Kleinman prize, established in 1998, is awarded to one individual for outstanding research that bridges the gap between mathematics and applications. Work that uses high-level mathematics and/or invents new mathematical tools to solve applied problems from engineering, science, and technology is particularly appropriate. The prize is administered by SIAM and awarded every two years at the SIAM Annual Meeting.