Congratulations to the Inaugural Group of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society (AMS)

The American Mathematical Society (AMS) recently announced its inaugural list of Fellows.

Other societies, that I am a member of, have had the "Fellows" distinction (much)  longer from INFORMS  to The Econometric Society to SIAM to RSAI. I am a Fellow of the RSAI.

Needless to say, since AMS just introduced the Fellows recognition in 2012 the list is quite long with the goals of the Fellows Program being, according to the AMS website;

• To create an enlarged class of mathematicians recognized by their peers as distinguished for their contributions to the profession.
• To honor not only the extraordinary but also the excellent.
• To lift the morale of the profession by providing an honor more accessible than those currently available.
• To make mathematicians more competitive for awards, promotion, and honors when they are being compared with colleagues from other disciplines.
• To support the advancement of more mathematicians in leadership positions in their own institutions and in the broader society.

Looking at the list of AMS Fellows took me down memory lane since not only were there names of mathematicians that I had cited in my papers and books and that I serve on editorial boards with and have also interacted with in various professional settings over the years, but there were 15 AMS Fellows from Brown University, my alma mater. From the Division of Applied Mathematics the AMS Fellows are: Constantine Dafermos, Wendell Fleming, Stuart Geman, John Mallet-Paret, Donald McClure, David Mumford, Chi-Wang Shu, and Walter Strauss and the honorees from the Department of Mathematics are: Thomas Goodwillie, Thomas Banchoff, Stephen Lichtenbaum, Hee Oh, Jill Pipher, Joseph Silverman, and John Wermer.

Since I have 3 degrees in Applied Math from Brown and also a degree in Russian Language and Literature (yes, I love languages of all sorts, including computer programming languages)  I know and even had as instructors many of the faculty on the above list in Applied Math. Plus, Constantine Dafermos was Stella Dafermos' husband and she was my doctoral dissertation advisor at Brown. 

Of course, on the list are individuals who already are Fellows of other societies that I mentioned above.

Congratulations to all the AMS Fellows!