The Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS) has selected Priscilla Greenwood as the winner of the 2002 Krieger-Nelson Prize, Edwin Perkins, the winner of the 2002 Jeffery-Williams Prize and Kai Behrend as the winner of the 2001 Coxeter-James Prize.

CMS 2002 Krieger-Nelson Prize - Dr. Priscilla Greenwood (University of British Columbia / Arizona State University)

The Krieger-Nelson Prize recognizes outstanding research by a female mathematician.

Dr. Priscilla Greenwood was born in Kansas, USA and obtained her B.A. in mathematics form Duke University in 1959, and her Ph.D from the University of Wisconsin (Madison) in 1963. She held positions at the University of Wisconsin and North Carolina College and, from 1966 to 2000 at the University of British Columbia. In 2000 she moved to Arizona State University. She was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS) in 1985 and served on the IMS Council from 1988-2000.

Over 35 years, Priscilla Greenwood's research career has spanned a broad range of topics in probability and statistics and she has brought together ideas from different fields in a sustained research program. During the past 15 years she has made fundamental contributions to mathematical statistics and, in particular, to the statistics of general stochastic processes. Her continued interest in the applications of probability and statistics led to her leadership of a large interdisciplinary research project at the University of British Columbia (1997 to 2000) which was funded by the Wall Institute and involved dozens of scientists in mathematics, geophysics, psychology, zoology, and physics.

Dr. Greenwood will present the 2002 Krieger-Nelson Prize Lecture at Laval University (Québec) in June 2002.

CMS 2002 Jeffery-Williams Prize - Dr. Edwin Perkins (University of British Columbia)

The Jeffery-Williams Prize recognizes mathematicians who have made outstanding contributions to mathematical research.

Dr. Edwin Perkins was born in Toronto and obtained his B.Sc. in mathematics from the University of Toronto in 1975, and his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois (Urbana) in 1979. He has been at the University of British Columbia since 1979. He was awarded the Rollo Davidson prize for young probabilists in 1983 and the CMS Coxeter-James Prize in 1986. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1988, and was awarded an NSERC Steacie Fellowship in 1992.

Edwin Perkins has made outstanding contributions to probability theory. Early in his career he pioneered the application of non-standard analysis to probability theory, and proved several spectacular results on the sample paths of Brownian motion. Perkins has been a world leader in the study of "superprocesses", or measure valued diffusions. Using non-standard analysis, he found a particle description of super-Brownian motion which enabled the establishment of very accurate estimates of the space-time behaviour of this process. Recently, with Richard Durrett (Cornell) and Theodore Cox (Syracuse) he has made a very exciting link between particles systems and superprocesses.

Dr. Perkins will give the 2002 Jeffery-Williams Prize Lecture at Laval University (Québec) in June 2002.

CMS 2001 Coxeter-James Prize - Dr. Kai Behrend (University of British Columbia)

The Coxeter-James Prize recognizes young mathematicians who have made outstanding contributions to mathematical research.

Dr. Kai Behrend obtained his M.A. from the University of Oregon in 1984, his Diploma from the University of Bonn in 1989 and his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1991. He was a Moore Instructor at MIT from 1991 to 1994 before joining the staff at the University of British Columbia. He has held visiting positions at the Max-Planck-Institut für Mathematik, Bonn, and at Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Kyoto, Japan.

Kai Behrend is one of the world's leading experts in the theory of algebraic stacks and the geometry of moduli spaces of stable maps, which has become one of the most important areas in algebraic geometry because of the unexpected predictions in enumerative algebraic geometry made by physicists based on string theory. Two of his publications, one with Barbara Fantechi (Trento, Italy) are among the most widely cited works in algebraic geometry over the last five years. Kai's recent work on differential graded stacks is an extremely important contribution to the construction of extended moduli spaces.

Dr. Behrend will present the 2001 Coxeter-James Prize Lecture at York University (Toronto) in December 2001.

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