A night of music and dance at ICM dinner party
The dinner on Saturday night, organized by the 2018 International Congress of Mathematicians, assembled around a thousand people in a social event with plenty of food, music, and dancing.
A stunning performance by the Vila Isabel samba school enchanted attendees. But for two people, the party was made even more special: the American David Donoho and the Japanese Masaki Kashiwara were presented, respectively, the Gauss Prize and the Chern Medal, awarded only every four years.
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Donoho, a Stanford University professor, was awarded for his exceptional mathematical contribution to an area outside of mathematics. Dedicating his efforts to Statistics, Information Theory and Applied Mathematics, he made fundamental contributions to statistical theory and computation, as well as signal processing and harmonic analysis.
Since 2006, the International Mathematics Union (IMU) and the German Mathematical Society have jointly granted this award in tribute to the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855). Gauss left his mark in several areas of math and science and made significant contributions to the theory of numbers, statistics, mathematical analysis, differential geometry, geophysics, astronomy, and optics.
With a brilliant career that spans five decades, Masaki Kashiwara, an emeritus professor at the University of Kyoto and a specialist in algebraic analysis, received the Chern Award in recognition of his extraordinary feats in the field of mathematics.
A joint effort by the IMU and the Chern Medal Foundation, the prize was created in 2009 in honor of the Chinese mathematician Shiing-Shen Chern (1911-2004), who was devoted to research and education in mathematics. It was first awarded at the 2010 ICM in Hyderabad, India.
In addition to the 24-carat gold medal, Chern medalists also receive 500 thousand dollars, half of which is redirected toward an institution of the medalist’s choosing with the purpose of supporting research, education, and mathematics extension programs. Kashiwara chose the University of Kyoto’s Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences (RIMS), where he has been a head professor since 1984.
