Each year, the Council of the Society considers the election of Honorary Members of the Society from amongst distinguished mathematicians who are not normally resident within the United Kingdom. The election of Honorary Members is made by Council, subject to confirmation by the Society at an Ordinary Meeting.
There is no statutory limit on the number of Honorary Members that can be elected in any year, and there is no constraint on the time or frequency of such elections.
2012 Honorary Members
The London Mathematical Society has elected Dr James Simons of Renaissance Technologies, US and Professor Claire Voisin of the Institute de Mathématiques de Jussieu at the University of Paris VI: Pierre et Marie Curie, France to Honorary Membership of the Society.
Short citations appear in the September 2012 issue (No.417) of the Society’s Newsletter:
Dr James Simons is not only a distinguished mathematician but is one of the greatest worldwide benefactors of mathematics. His early work in differential geometry with his teacher Chern led to the famous ‘Chern-Simons action’ of quantum field theory. Subsequently, with his student Cheeger, he invented cohomology.
In the 1970s he left mathematics for the financial world where his success enabled him to set up the Simons Foundation, which funds mathematical research worldwide and has made large contributions to the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, MSRI at Berkeley, and the IHES in France, among other bodies. He has also endowed the new Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook University.
Professor Claire Voisin works in complex algebraic geometry, using a mixture of algebraic and analytical methods. She is a leader in Hodge theory and the theory of algebraic cycles. She constructed the first examples of compact Kähler manifolds, which are not homotopy equivalent to any projective variety. She proved many of the strongest known results of the Hodge conjecture, and on Green’s conjecture on algebraic curves. She is well known as the author of several books, including Mirror Symmetry and Hodge Theory and Complex Algebraic Geometry.
Full citations for Dr Simons and Professor Voisin will appear in the LMS Bulletin.
Submitted by Elizabeth Fisher on
