Mathematician Curtis McMullen Wins Prestigious Fields Medal

By William J. Cromie

Gazette Staff

Curtis McMullen, a newly appointed professor of mathematics, has won the Fields Medal, the highest award given to mathematicians.

The prestigious prize, which recognizes both existing work and promise of future achievement, is given every four years to mathematicians age 40 and under. McMullen is 40.

The Medal was presented on Aug. 18 at a meeting of the International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin. Richard Borcherds and William Gowers of the University of Cambridge (England), and Maxim Kontsevich of the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (France) also won the honor.

No Nobel Prize exists for mathematics. "This is a substitute, and I'm delighted to receive it," McMullen said.

He received a gold medal and $15,000 Canadian because the founder of the award, J.D. Fields, was Canadian. The cash equivalent is about $9,600 U.S., considerably less than the $1 million given to Nobelists in physics and chemistry last year.

"That's OK," said McMullen. "Mathematicians are basically happy just proving their theorems."

McMullen's major work involved finding the relationship between the geometry of three-dimensional objects and the universal structure that occurs in the transition from regular to chaotic physical behavior.

Physicists have found a surprising amount of common structure in different systems whose behavior changes from predictable to unpredictable. Examples include smoothly flowing water that becomes turbulent, asteroids suddenly swinging out of regular orbits, and a heart suddenly starting to beat irregularly. McMullen has constructed a new geometric perspective on the structures common to such physical changes.

"There are many practical applications to this work," he said, "such as more detailed knowledge of how heart attacks begin, how earthquakes start, and how an asteroid might suddenly change its path and head for Earth."

McMullen received a Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard in 1985. He held academic positions at M.I.T., Princeton, and the University of California, Berkeley, before returning to Harvard as a visiting professor in 1997. He received a tenured appointment this summer.