Dr. Thomas Hutchcroft named 2018 Doctoral Prize recipient

Dr. Thomas Hutchcroft (Cambridge)
(photo: Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach)

OTTAWA, Ontario — The Canadian Mathematical Society is pleased to announce that Dr. Thomas Hutchcroft (Cambridge) is named the 2018 Doctoral Prize recipient. Dr. Hutchcroft will present a prize lecture and receive his award at the CMS Winter meeting in Vancouver, BC, December 7-10, 2018.

Thomas Hutchcroft is regarded as one of the top recent Ph.D.s in probability theory in the world. His thesis is an impressive collection of results, most of which are published in leading journals, such as Inventiones Mathematicae, Geometrical and Functional Analysis and Annals of Probability. In particular, together with Asaf Nachmias, Hutchcroft has made remarkable progress in the study of uniform spanning trees on unimodular and planar graphs, answering several open questions raised in a celebrated paper by Benjamini, Lyons, Peres and Schramm. In a solo paper, Dr. Hutchcroft proved that critical percolation almost surely has only finite clusters on all transitive graphs of exponential growth. One of the central open problems in percolation is to prove this property for any transitive graph of at least quadratic growth, and Dr. Hutchcroft's work is an important step in this direction. In his research, Hutchcroft often uses tools from different branches of mathematics, including complex analysis, differential geometry and topology. For example, his paper with Omer Angel, Asaf Nachmias and Gourab Ray combined hyperbolic triangulations, circle packings, random walks and mass transport in an ingenious way.

After completing his undergraduate and MMath studies (the third and the most difficult part of the famous Mathematical Tripos) at the University of Cambridge, Hutchcroft moved to the University of British Columbia, where under the supervision of Omer Angel and Asaf Nachmias, he obtained his Ph.D. in 2017. Earlier this year, Dr. Hutchcroft was awarded a Governor General’s Gold Medal by the University of British Columbia for is doctoral work. During several summers, he has also been a research intern at the Microsoft Research Theory Group, mentored by Alexander Holroyd and Yuval Peres.

Currently, Dr. Hutchcroft is a Herchel Smith Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cambridge and Junior Research Fellow at Trinity College.

About the Doctoral Prize

The Doctoral Prize recognizes outstanding performance by a doctoral student. The prize is awarded to one or two recipients of a Ph.D. from a Canadian university whose overall performance in graduate school is judged to be the most outstanding. Although the dissertation will be the most important criterion (the impact of the results, the creativity of the work, the quality of exposition, etc.) it will not be the only one. Other publications, activities in support of students and other accomplishments will also be considered.

For information about past recipients visit: Doctoral Prize

About the Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS)

The CMS is the main national organization whose goal is to promote and advance the discovery, learning and application of mathematics. The Society’s activities cover the whole spectrum of mathematics including: scientific meetings, research publications, and the promotion of excellence in mathematics competitions that recognize outstanding student achievements.

For more information, please contact:

Patricia Dack
Fundraising and Communications Officer
Canadian Mathematical Society
Tel: (613) 733-2662 ext. 728
pdack@cms.math.ca

Prof. Nantel Bergeron (York)
Chair, CMS Research Committee
Tel: (416) 736-5250
bergeron@yorku.ca