The winner of the Canadian Mathematical Society's   2001 Adrien Pouliot Award for mathematics Education is Dr. George Bluman. Dr. Nathan Ng has won the Society's 2001 Doctoral Prize and Dr. James Timourian will receive the CMS Distinguished Service Award for 2001. All three awards will be presented at the CMS 2001 Winter Meeting Delegates Luncheon on December 9th at the Toronto Colony Hotel.

Dr. Bluman did his undergraduate studies at UBC and obtained his doctoral degree from the California Institute of Technology. He is currently Head of the Department of Mathematics at UBC and the CMS Vice-President for the Western Provinces. His research area is symmetries and differential equations and, in addition to 40 research papers, he has written several books and is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Engineering Mathematics.

For more than three decades, George Bluman has exercised extraordinary leadership and invested a great deal of energy in promoting sound mathematics education and student interest in mathematics in British Columbia. Nationally, he was the Chair of the CMS Education Committee (1978 to 1981) and has been a member of the problems committees for the University of Waterloo contests for many years.

Dr. Bluman has given more than 150 talks and workshops to students and teachers. He developed a very successful workshop format and has mobilized a team of faculty, graduate and undergraduate students who give presentations to schools. Mainly though his leadership, more than 175 schools and 2600 students in British Columbia participate in the annual Euclid Mathematics Contest. In the early 1990's, he introduced a calculus challenge examination at the University of British Columbia, whereby talented mathematics students can qualify for advanced credit and gain access to advanced courses.

At the University level, Dr. Bluman was a founding member of the Institute of Applied Mathematics. From 1989 to 1991, he helped establish an off-campus four-year degree program at the University College of the Cariboo and at Okanagan University College. In the public domain, he has provided encouragement and support for teachers and public schools.

Dr. Bluman was the recipient of a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship (1964) and received the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences Education Prize in December, 2000. The Society is proud to recognize the passion, insight and energy of one of its most distinguished members.

Dr. Nathan Ng was born in Vancouver and obtained his Bachelor's degree from the University of British Columbia (1994), his Master's degree from the University of Toronto (1995), and his Ph.D. from UBC (2000) under the supervision of Dr. David Boyd, the 2001 recipient of the CMS Jeffery-Williams Prize.

His doctoral thesis - Limiting distributions and zeros of Artin L-functions - is in the field of analytic number theory and, in this thesis, Nathan Ng extends and develops, in a far-reaching fashion, the analysis of the fine structure of the distribution of prime counting functions and the Mobius function. The results he obtained have been called "remarkable, surprising and unexpected". Dr. Ng has mastered large areas of both analytic and algebraic number theory, and he is very good at difficult computational problems.

Dr. Ng is a talented teacher and, in 1999, he received a UBC Graduate Student Teaching Award. In August 2001, Nathan Ng will commence an NSERC Postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Georgia under the supervision of Dr. Andrew Granville one of the world's most distinguished number theorists and a graduate of Queen's University.

The Society is extremely proud to once again have identified an exceptional young Canadian researcher.

Dr. James Timourian obtained his undergraduate degree from Hamilton College (New York) and his doctoral degree from Syracuse University. He has been a member of the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Alberta since 1969 and was the Associate Chair (Undergraduate) for the Mathematical Sciences from 1994 to 1998.

His research areas are Singularity Theory, Elliptic Operators and Partial Differential Equations. He has long been interested in undergraduate education, especially first-year and honors calculus and, in 1996, organized a very successful in-service program for Alberta high-school calculus teachers.

James Timourian has made many contributions to mathematics in Alberta. Nationally he has served on and chaired many CMS committees and was the Chair of the Canadian National Committee for the International Mathematical Union. He is currently the Chair of the CMS Endowment Grants Committee. Dr. Timourian is a successful entrepreneur in areas such as bio-technology and is a noted philanthropist.

The CMS is delighted that the 2001 Distinguished Service Award is given to Dr. Timourian to honour his extensive and diverse contributions to Canadian mathematics.

Dr. Jonathan Borwein
President
Canadian Mathematical Society
Tel: (604) 291-3070
Email: president@cms.math.ca

OR

Dr. Graham P. Wright
Executive Director
Canadian Mathematical Society
Tel: (613) 562-5702
Email: director@cms.math.ca