image: Andras Vasy is the winner of the 2017 American Mathematical Society Bôcher Prize. view more
Credit: Photo taken by Marguerite Wong Vasy.
Andras Vasy of Stanford University will receive the 2017 AMS Bôcher Prize "for his fundamental paper `Microlocal analysis of asymptotically hyperbolic and Kerr-de Sitter spaces,' Inventiones Mathematicae, 194 (2013), 381513."
Vasy's main area of research is in partial differential equations, which are equations representing systems that change over time. For example, various kinds of waves including sound waves can be represented by partial differential equations. Studying how waves scatter when encountering objects or other waves---for example, sound waves bouncing off walls and other objects in a concert hall---is the goal of scattering theory. Within mathematics, scattering theory examines similar issues in more-abstract settings, by examining how solutions to partial differential equations interact over time.
The prize-winning paper of Andras Vasy resolves a 35-year-old conundrum in geometric scattering theory and develops a systematic framework for analyzing certain partial differential equations. Although it appeared only in 2013, the paper has had a major impact and stimulated much subsequent research, some of it by Vasy and his co-authors. The prize citation also recognizes "Vasy's outstanding contributions to multi-body scattering and to propagation of singularities for solutions to wave equations on regions with singular boundaries."
Andras Vasy received his PhD in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1997. He was on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, and of MIT before taking his present position of professor of mathematics at Stanford University. He was a Clay Research Fellow (2002-2004) and an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow (2002-2004).
In 2015, the AMS published Vasy's book Partial Differential Equations: An Accessible Route through Theory and Applications. Keeping the technical demands as low as possible in this highly technical area, the book aims to introduce advanced undergraduates or beginning graduate students to some of the basic tools needed to solve partial differential equations.
The AMS Bôcher Prize is awarded every three years for a notable paper in analysis published during the preceding six years. The prize will be awarded Thursday, January 5, 2017, at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Atlanta.
Find out more about AMS prizes and awards at http://www.ams.org/profession/prizes-awards/prizes.
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Founded in 1888 to further mathematical research and scholarship, today the 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.