Indian-American Mathematician Nikhil Srivastava Among 3 To Solve Famous 1959 Problem, Wins Ciprian Foias Prize

Nikhil Srivastava has earlier jointly won the George Polya Prize in 2014, and the Held prize in 2021 making this his third major award. He is an associate professor of mathematics at UC Berkeley.

Indian-American Mathematician Nikhil Srivastava

New Delhi: Indian-American mathematician, Nikhil Srivastava, who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley along with Adam Marcus and Daniel Spielman were awarded the Ciprian Foias Prize in Operator Theory by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) reported PTI. 

The award recognises their highly original work that introduced and developed methods for understanding the characteristic polynomial of matrices, namely the iterative sparsification method (also in collaboration with Batson) and the method of interlacing polynomials, a media release said.

Along with Nikhil Srivastava, the two other awardees are Adam Marcus and Daniel Spielman. Adam Marcus holds the Chair of Combinatorial Analysis at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. Daniel Spielman is a Sterling Professor of Computer Science, a professor of statistics and data science, and a professor of mathematics.

"Together, these ideas provided a powerful toolkit with many applications, notably in the trio's breakthrough paper "Interlacing families II: mixed characteristic polynomials and the Kadison-Singer problem" (Annals of Mathematics, 2015), which solves the famous "paving problem'' in operator theory, formulated by Richard Kadison and Isadore Singer in 1959," American Mathematical Society said.

According to the report, in a joint statement said, the three awardees said they wish to accept it on behalf of the many people whose work contributed to the resolution of the Kadison-Singer problem.

"Our involvement was the final chapter of an amazing story we hope will inspire similar solutions to difficult problems in the future," they said.

The prize will be presented to Professor Nikhil Srivastava and his colleagues on January 5 next year at the 2022 Joint Mathematics Meeting in Seattle, described as "the largest mathematics gathering in the world." 

Nikhil Srivastava has earlier jointly won the George Polya Prize in 2014, and the Held prize in 2021 making this his third major award. Nikhil Srivastava is an associate professor of mathematics at UC Berkeley. He double-majored in Mathematics and Computer Science and minored in English at Union College, advised by Alan Taylor and Peter Heinegg. He received his PhD in computer science at Yale in 2010.

The Ciprian Foias Prize in Operator Theory is awarded for notable work in operator theory published in a recognized, peer-reviewed venue during the preceding six years. The prize, awarded every three years, was established in 2020 in memory of Ciprian Foias (1933-2020) by colleagues and friends. He was an influential scholar in operator theory and fluid mechanics, a generous mentor, and an enthusiastic advocate of the mathematical community.