Indiana University mathematician named American Mathematical Society Fellow
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Michael Mandell, a professor of mathematics at Indiana University Bloomington's College of Arts and Sciences, has been named a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
Mandell was one of 63 mathematicians honored as fellows last month in San Antonio at the Joint Mathematics Meeting of the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America, the largest gathering of mathematicians in the world.
Mandell is a highly regarded scholar of topology, the mathematical study of shapes and spaces, and in particular of the branch called homotopy theory, the study of pairs of mathematical objects that can be continuously deformed into each other.
“Mike Mandell has been described as the master homotopy theorist of his generation. His work in algebraic topology is deep and technically difficult,” said Russell Lyons, Rudy Professor of Mathematics at IU Bloomington, who wrote the department’s nomination of Mandell for the recognition.
As a graduate student, Mandell co-authored a monograph on the foundations of stable homotopy theory and spectra that is now the standard reference in the field, Lyons said. The book and subsequent papers on diagram spectra revolutionized stable homotopy theory. Later he developed what is known as Mandell’s theorem, which gives what some mathematicians believe to be the best algebraic description of homotopy type. He also published a series of papers that established the correct foundational coherence issues in certain constructions of stable homotopy theory.
An IU faculty member since 2005, Mandell earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago and a B.S. in mathematics from Yale University. He was an Eisenbud Professor at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2014 and held a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship from 1998 to 2002. He has served on the editorial boards of Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society and Homology, Homotopy and Applications.
The American Mathematical Society, based in Providence, R.I., was founded in 1888 to further the interests of mathematical research and scholarship. Its publications, meetings and programs promote mathematical research, encourage the transmission of mathematical understanding and skill, support mathematical education and foster appreciation of mathematics in everyday life.
The society created its fellows program in 2012-13 to recognize members who have made outstanding to the creation, exposition, advancement, community and utilization of mathematics. Previously named fellows from IU include Hari Bercovici, Michael J. Larsen, Shouhong Wang, Kevin Zumbrun, Eric Bedford, David Fisher, Robert Glassey, Russell Lyons, Peter Sternberg and Roger M. Temam from IU Bloomington and Alexander Its and Michal Misiurewicz from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.
