The National Academy of Sciences award for Scientific Reviewing is slated to be given in Mathematics (understood to include Applied Mathematics) in April 2013. The award cycles among many fields, and the last (and only) time it was given in Mathematics was 1995. This year, I am on the prize committee for this award and am therefore circulating a call for nominations.
This award is intended “to recognize authors whose reviews have synthesized extensive and difficult material, rendering a significant service to science and influencing the course of scientific thought”. As such, it is slightly different in focus from most awards in mathematics, which tend to focus more on original research contributions than on synthesis and exposition, which in my opinion is an equally important component of mathematical research.
In 1995, this prize was awarded to Rob Kirby “For his list of problems in low-dimensional topology and his tireless maintenance of it; several generations have been greatly influenced by Kirby’s list.”.
Instructions for how to submit nominations can be found at this page. Nominees and awardees do not need to be members of the Academy, and can be based outside of the United States. The award comes with a medal and a $10,000 prize. The deadline for nominations is 1 October 2012.
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13 July, 2012 at 2:00 pm
Ian Agol
John Morgan might be a good choice. His expository paper on Thurston’s geometrization theorem for Haken manifolds was quite important, as well as his exposition with Tian of Perelman’s proof of the geometrization conjecture. He also has expositions of works of Sullivan, Donaldson, and Seiberg-Witten, some of the most important developments in geometric topology.
13 July, 2012 at 2:28 pm
Terence Tao
Ah, um, perhaps I should have mentioned that John is the chair of this committee, and is thus ineligible for this award. :-)
13 July, 2012 at 3:42 pm
Anonymous
In light of the last award, I think Richard Guy ought to be considered for his “Unsolved Problems in …” books.
16 July, 2012 at 12:40 am
Tim van Beek
What about John Baez and his column “This Week’s Finds in Mathematical Physics”?
16 July, 2012 at 10:56 pm
Yiftach
It is sort of obvious, but you should consider Gorenstein, Lyons and Solomon for the revision of the classifcation of finite simple groups.
17 July, 2012 at 12:07 am
Anonymous
If I had the time or ability to nominate Richard Guy, I would go with him! He is an incredible expositor of mathematics and has been tirelessly surviving the mathematical community for almost an entire century!
17 July, 2012 at 2:12 am
Bobito
As someone who had to teach numerical analysis without being an expert in it, I found numerous reviews written by N. Trefethen to be very clear and very useful.
17 July, 2012 at 5:34 pm
Yan Xiaodong
I think that Yau S-T is the best choice for his open problems in geometry.
20 July, 2012 at 7:18 am
Christian
I really hope to be there, or, at least, to buy a t-shirt of the event…
19 August, 2012 at 3:22 am
claver
Where is Terry?
19 August, 2012 at 7:05 pm
Marcelo de Almeida
Reblogged this on Being simple and commented:
This award is too important for all of us, Terence call for nominations.
27 August, 2012 at 5:22 pm
Yo soy josefina
I say Bill Nye the science guy!
28 August, 2012 at 11:12 am
shannon7774
Thurston could have been a good one. Maybe John Horton Conway for many contributions including writing books at all levels.
1 September, 2012 at 7:46 pm
cczy
Actually I much respect people who develop Mathematic.
very nice, that award is not money onlt, but also nedal, will be interesting to see picture.
1995 winner, Rob Kirby, if I’m correct, he is from University of California, isn’t he?
7 January, 2013 at 10:16 pm
Terence Tao
An update: after considering many strong applications (including those contributed from the comments here), the committee recommended to award the prize to Bruce Kleiner and John Lott for their extensive explication of Perelman’s proof of the Poincare and geometrisation conjectures. (The full citation may be found here.)