OTTAWA, Ontario -- The winner of the Canadian Mathematical Society's 2004 Doctoral Prize is Dr. Nicolaas Spronk and Dr. Edgar Goodaire will receive the CMS Distinguished Service Award for 2004. Both awards will be presented at the CMS 2004 Winter Meeting Banquet on December 12th at Hilton Bonaventure Hotel, Montréal.

2004 CMS Doctoral Prize - Dr.Nicolaas Spronk (University of Waterloo)
The CMS Doctoral Prize recognizes outstanding performance by a doctoral student who graduated from a Canadian university.

Nicolaas Spronk received his B.Sc. from the University of Alberta in 1995 and his M.Math. from the University of Waterloo in 1997. He was a graduate student of Professor Brian Forrest at the University of Waterloo and completed his Ph.D. in 2002. Since then he has held an NSERC postdoctoral fellowship at Texas A&M University.

It is with great enthusiasm that the Canadian Mathematical Society awards the 2004 Doctoral Prize to Nicolaas Spronk. As a graduate student of Professor Brian Forrest at the University of Waterloo, Nicolaas Spronk wrote a remarkable thesis in the area of abstract harmonic analysis. He has used the new and highly technical theory of operator spaces to solve hard problems in non-commutative harmonic analysis. Nicolaas Spronk has launched a productive and promising research career with almost ten papers published or accepted for publication.

2004 CMS Distinguished Service Award - Dr. Edgar Goodaire (Memorial University of Newfoundland)
The CMS Distinguished Service Award was created in 1995 to recognize individuals who have made sustained and significant contributions to the Canadian mathematical community and, in particular, to the Canadian Mathematical Society.

The recipient of the 2004 Canadian Mathematical Society Distinguished Service Award is Edgar G. Goodaire from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St John's. The award recognizes lifelong work to the development of mathematics in the country and commitment and service to the Canadian mathematical community, to the Canadian Mathematical Society and to the Atlantic mathematical community.

Edgar Goodaire has a very long history of service to the CMS and has occupied many strategic positions. He started as an being Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Mathematical Bulletin from 1981 to 1985. He was a member of the Publications Committee (1983-88) and he Chaired the Committee from 1986 to 1988. He served on the Nominating Committee on two occasions: as member (1982-83 and 1994-97) and as Chair (1995-97). He was Treasurer from 1990 to 1992 and a member of the Task Force on Office Strategies from 1999 to 2000. He served on the Electronic Services Committee for three years and was Chair from 1999 to 2000. From 2001 to 2003, he was the CMS Vice-President for the Atlantic Region. During this period he was Deputy President, Board member, member of the Distinguished Service Award Committee and the President's delegate on the Publications Committee. He has just become a member of the Advancement of Mathematics Committee and served on the jury for the first CMS Excellence in Teaching Award.

Apart from his service to the CMS, Edgar Goodaire has worked all his life for mathematics in Atlantic Canada. Currently, he is very involved in the Atlantic Association for Research in the Mathematical Sciences (AARMS) and, in particular, the organization of the AARMS summer schools. He has done a lot of work with APICS (Atlantic Provinces Council on the Sciences) and has been Chair of the APICS Mathematics and Statistics Committee since 2001.

Dr. Goodaire went to Memorial University in 1973 after completing a Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia and an undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto. He was promoted to Full Professor in 1989. He has served on every major committee in the Department of Mathematics and the Faculty of Science and was Head of the Department during the period 1991- 1994. Outside the university, he is an accomplished violinist who, for many years, played in the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra. He enjoys watching professional football and avidly follows his beloved Toronto Argonauts on television.

Dr. Goodaire is a leading world expert on certain non- associative algebraic structures known as loops, in particular Bol and Moufang loops. He founded the field of alternative loop rings. He has published over 60 research articles and four books, including a recent undergraduate textbook in Linear Algebra. His popular text "Discrete Mathematics with Graph Theory" with Michael M. Parmenter is scheduled for a third edition. His research has been funded continuously by NRC/NSERC throughout his career.

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