06/05/2019

Avila is elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Artur Avila é pesquisador extraordinário do IMPA Foto: Divulgação IMPA /Daryan Dornelles

Brazilian Artur Avila, 2014 Fields Medalist, professor at the University of Zurich (Switzerland) and extraordinary researcher at the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA), was elected a foreign associate to the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (NAS).

According to an announcement published on the Academy's official website, Avila, 39, is the only Brazilian among the 100 new members and 25 foreign associates elected.

A private, non-profit institution founded in 1863, the NAS elects researchers with outstanding contributions to science. Currently, seven Brazilians are members of the Academy, three of them from IMPA. Besides Avila, Jacob Palis and Aloisio Araujo are affiliated with the institution. Those who do not hold American citizenship can only be elected as foreign associates. They are non-voting members.

The statement also highlights a historic milestone for female members: 40% of newly admitted members are female, a proportion never before achieved.

With the newly elected members, the Academy now has 2,347 active members and 487 foreign associates.

Artur Avila, a native of Rio de Janeiro, earned his master's and doctoral degrees from IMPA in the area of Dynamical Systems and Ergodic Theory, and also became a researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). In July 2018, he left France for Switzerland, where he became a researcher at the University of Zurich.

In addition to the highest recognition in Mathematics, the Fields Medal, and election to the NAS, Avila won the Medal of the National Order of Educational Merit, awarded by the Ministry of Education in 2018; and the Personality Award from the France-Brazil Chamber of Commerce, an honor received in 2017.