Sylvester Medal - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Sylvester Medal is a bronze medal awarded by the Royal Society

Royal Society

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

(London) for the encouragement of mathematical research, and accompanied by a £1,000 prize. It was named in honour of James Joseph Sylvester

James Joseph Sylvester

James Joseph Sylvester was an English mathematician. He made fundamental contributions to matrix theory, invariant theory, number theory, partition theory and combinatorics...

, the Savilian Professor of Geometry at the University of Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

in the 1880s, and first awarded in 1901, having been suggested by a group of Sylvester's friends (primarily Raphael Meldola

Raphael Meldola

Raphael Meldola FRS was a British chemist and entomologist. He was Professor of Organic Chemistry in the University of London, 1912–5.- Life :...

) after his death in 1897. Initially awarded every three years with a prize of around £900, the Royal Society have announced that starting in 2009 it will be awarded every two years instead, and is to be aimed at 'early to mid career stage scientist' rather than an established mathematician. The award winner is chosen by the Society's A-side awards committee, which handles physical rather than biological science awards.

As of 2008, 36 medals have been awarded, of which 27 have been awarded to citizens of the United Kingdom and two to citizens of France. One medal each has been won by citizens of New Zealand, Germany, Austria, Russia, Italy, Sweden and the United States. Only one woman (Mary Cartwright

Mary Cartwright

Dame Mary Lucy Cartwright DBE FRS was a leading 20th-century British mathematician. She was born in Aynho, Northamptonshire where her father was the vicar and died in Cambridge, England...

) has ever won the Medal.

List of recipients

Year	Nationality	Rationale
1901	French France The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...	"for his many and important contributions to mathematical science."
1904	German Germany Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...	"for his brilliant researches in the theories of aggregates and of sets of points of the arithmetic continuum, of transfinite numbers, and Fouriers series."
1907

}||Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n||"for his contributions to the general theory of functions."
|-
|1910|| ||British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

||"for his researches in the theory of Abelian functions and for his edition of Sylvesters Collected Works."
|-
|1913|| ||British

United Kingdom

||"for his mathematical researches, especially those in connection with the theory of numbers and the theory of elliptic functions."
|-
|1916|| ||French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

||"for his distinguished contributions to mathematical science."
|-
|1919|| ||British

United Kingdom

||"for his researches in pure mathematics, especially in connection with the partition of numbers and analysis."
|-
|1922|| ||Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

||"for his researches in geometry and mechanics."
|-
|1925|| ||British

United Kingdom

||"for his researches on the foundations of mathematics."
|-
|1928|| ||British

United Kingdom

||"for his contributions to the theory of functions of a real variable."
|-
|1931|| ||British

United Kingdom

||"for his original contributions to both pure and applied mathematics."
|-
|1934|| ||British

United Kingdom

||"for his distinguished work on the foundations of mathematics."
|-
|1937|| ||British

United Kingdom

||"for his researches in classical mathematical physics, particularly the mathematical theories of elasticity and hydro-dynamics."
|-
|1940|| ||British

United Kingdom

||"for his important contributions to many branches of pure mathematics."
|-
|1943|| ||British

United Kingdom

||"for his mathematical discoveries and supreme insight in the analytical theory of numbers."
|-
|1946|| ||British

United Kingdom

||"for his distinguished contributions to pure mathematics in the field of mathematical analysis and in particular for his work on asymptotic expansion and on general transforms.
|-
|1949|| ||British

United Kingdom

||"for his distinguished researches in pure mathematics, especially for his discoveries in the theory of numbers."
|-
|1952|| ||Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n||"for his outstanding work on almost-periodic functions, the theory of measure and integration and many other topics of theory of functions."
|-
|1955|| ||British

United Kingdom

||"for his distinguished researches on the Riemann zeta-function, analytical theory of numbers, Fourier analysis, and eigen-function expansions."
|-
|1958|| ||British

United Kingdom

||"for his distinguished contributions to combinatory topology, Boolean algebras and mathematical logic."
|-
|1961|| ||British

United Kingdom

||"for his distinguished researches in algebra."
|-
|1964|| ||British

United Kingdom

||"for her distinguished contributions to analysis and the theory of functions of a real and complex variable."
|-
|1967|| ||British

United Kingdom

|| "for his many distinguished contributions to the theory of numbers."
|-
|1970|| ||British

United Kingdom

||"for his many distinguished contributions to applied mathematics, especially in his work on distribution theory."
|-
|1973|| ||British

United Kingdom

|| "for his numerous important contributions to the theory of numbers."
|-
|1976|| ||British

United Kingdom

|| "for his many distinguished contributions to probability theory and its applications."
|-
|1979|| ||British

United Kingdom

|| "for his distinguished and profoundly influential contributions to the theory of finite and infinite groups.
|-
|1982|| ||British

United Kingdom

||"for his solution of several outstanding problems of algebraic topology and of the methods he invented for this purpose which have proved of prime importance in the theory of the subject."
|-
|1985|| ||American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

||"for his fundamental contributions leading to the complete classification of all finite simple groups."
|-
|1988|| ||British

United Kingdom

||"for his contributions to the topology of manifolds and related topics in algebra and geometry."
|-
|1991|| ||British

United Kingdom

||"for his many contributions to number theory and in particular his solution of the famous problem concerning approximating algebraic numbers by rationals."
|-
|1994|| ||New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

||"for his major distinctive contributions to time series analysis, to optimisation theory, and to a wide range of topics in applied probability theory and the mathematics of operational research."
|-
|1997|| ||British

United Kingdom

|| "for his achievements in geometry, notably projective geometry, non-euclidean geometry and the analysis of spatial shapes and patterns, and for his substantial contributions to practical group-theory which pervade much modern mathematics."
|-
|2000|| ||British

United Kingdom

|| "for his important contributions to many parts of differential geometry combining this with complex geometry, integrable systems and mathematical physics interweaving the most modern ideas with the classical literature."
|-
|2003|| ||Swedish

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

|| "for his deep and fundamental contributions to mathematics in the field of analysis and complex dynamics."
|-
|2006|| ||British

United Kingdom

|| "for his fundamental work in arithmetic geometry and his many contributions to the theory of ordinary differential equations."
|-
|2009|| ||British

United Kingdom

|| "for his seminal work in mechanics and nonlinear analysis and his encouragement of mathematical research in developing countries."
|-
|2010|| ||British

United Kingdom

|| "for his highly influential and elegant work on the development of topology, geometry and quantum field theory, bridging the gap between physics and pure mathematics."
|}

External links

Royal Society: Sylvester Medal

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