January 19, 2010

JHU mathematician shares Veblen Prize

William P. Minicozzi II, a Krieger-Eisenhower Professor in the School of Arts and Sciences, received the 2010 American Mathematical Society’s Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry on Jan. 14 at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Francisco.

Minicozzi was honored with co-author Tobias H. Colding of MIT for a series of papers in the Annals of Mathematics in which they developed a new structure theory for embedded minimal surfaces. According to a statement by the American Mathematical Society, the team’s research “led to the resolution of long-standing conjectures and initiated a wave of new results.”

Also sharing the Veblen Prize, for work separate from that of Colding and Minicozzi, was Paul Seidel of MIT.

The Veblen Prize was established in 1961 in honor of Oswald Veblen, who taught mathematics at Princeton University from 1905 to 1932. Veblen made important contributions in projective and differential geometries, including results considered important in modern physics.

The $5,000 prize is awarded every three years in recognition of notable research in geometry or topology that has been published within the preceding six years.                         —Lisa De Nike