Fifteen Brown faculty members were named to the inaugural class of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Nov. 1, placing the University 18th out of 327 institutions on the list and fourth in the Ivy League. The University of California at Berkeley had the most members named, with 33 fellows out of 1,142.
"The Fellows of the American Mathematical Society program recognizes members who have made outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication and utilization of mathematics," according to the American Mathematical Society's website.
The AMS Council used three initial criteria to assess candidates for the class of fellows, said Joseph Silverman, professor of mathematics, who is both a member of the AMS Council and an inaugural AMS fellow. The council chose researchers who have delivered AMS lectures in the past, been awarded AMS research prizes or delivered addresses at the International Congress of Mathematics or International Congress of Industrial and Applied Mathematics in the last two years, he said.
Many other professional institutions have fellows programs, such as the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, which named its inaugural class of fellows in 2009.
"The AMS has very few very prestigious prizes every year," Silverman said. "This was a way to recognize a larger group of mathematicians around the world."
He said the program aims to have around 2,000 fellows, adding that the AMS will induct 50 to 75 fellows per year after the inaugural class.
Silverman's primary focus of research is arithmetic geometry, concentrating in the distribution of integral and rational points on elliptical curves and on higher dimension abelian varieties, according to his research page.
"It's a delight to be honored," said Stuart Geman, professor of applied mathematics and an inaugural AMS fellow.
Geman is conducting research in building mathematical models for complicated patterns motivated by an effort to understand how the brain interprets and understands complicated images, he said.
"It's a very nice recognition and really an acknowledgement," said Thomas Banchoff, professor of mathematics and another inaugural fellow.
Banchoff gave a lecture for the International Congress of Mathematics about computer animation and the geometry of surfaces in 1978. It was the first major public lecture on computer animation, he said. Banchoff is currently conducting research on smooth and polyhedral surfaces.
The responsibilities of the AMS fellows are to help elect new fellows, to present a "public face of excellence" in mathematics and to advise the president and council of the AMS when asked, according to the AMS website.
Banchoff said the mathematical community today is experiencing "an era of good feeling."
"It's a great honor for those faculty members and for the (Applied Mathematics and Mathematics) departments," said Bjorn Sandstede, chair of the applied mathematics department.
"It is very good to know that the faculty gets acknowledged and their research gets acknowledged," Sandstede said, adding that this recognition helps the University to recruit undergraduate and graduate students.
There will be a reception for the new fellows at the joint meeting of the AMS and Mathematical Association of America in San Diego Jan. 11.
