Vaughan Jones, Fields Medal winner in 1990, dies.
Foto: Anne Rayner/Universidade Vanderbilt
Mathematician Vaughan F.R. Jones, professor at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Vanderbilt University and Fields Medal recipient in 1990, died suddenly on September 6th at the age of 67. The New Zealander worked primarily in the areas of von Neumann algebra theory, subfactors and plane algebras, mathematical physics, and low-dimensional topology. One of his most important discoveries was in the area of knot theory, with the creation of the "Jones polynomial".
“Vaughan Jones was a brilliant mathematician and a wonderful person, deeply caring about his students, colleagues, friends, and family. His research was a fundamental game-changer for the field of mathematics. When he joined our faculty, his presence and strength of personality transformed the mathematics department and the college. He will be missed,” said John Geer, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Vanderbilt University, to the institution's website .
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Born in 1952, Jones grew up in Auckland, New Zealand. At the University of Auckland, he earned a bachelor's and master's degree in science with honors. Awarded a scholarship from the Swiss government, Jones enrolled at the École de Physique in Geneva, and later transferred to the École des Mathématiques, where he earned his doctorate in 1979.
After spending a year at the University of California, Berkeley (UCLA), the mathematician went to the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a faculty member between 1981 and 1985. In 2011, he went to Vanderbilt University at the invitation of Nicholas S. Zeppos, a professor of Law and Political Science at the institution. The mathematician was at IMPA in 2014 for the keynote lecture “Subfactors, loop groups and conformal field theory” .
During the 1980s, Jones worked on a problem in von Neumann algebra theory linked to the foundations of quantum mechanics and discovered an unexpected connection between this theory and knot theory. The new mathematical expression discovered by the researcher, now known as the Jones polynomial, went unnoticed by topologists for 60 years and was essential for him to be awarded the Fields Medal.
In 1993, Jones was elected to the United States Academy of Arts and Sciences and, in 1999, became a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, and a Knight Companion of the Order of Merit of New Zealand. He also served as vice-president of the American Mathematical Society and the International Mathematical Union (IMU).
Jones is survived by his wife, Martha Jones, an economist and associate professor in the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt, and three children.