ETH-ITS Senior Fellow Claire Voisin receives the Shaw prize 2017

Claire Voisin, of the Collège de France, currently Senior Fellow at the ETH Institute for Theoretical Studies, receives the 2017 Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences. She shares the prize with János Kollár, of Princeton University.

by Livia Kürsteiner
Enlarged view: Claire Voisin
2017 Shaw Prize Awardee Claire Voisin. (Photo: Claire Voisin)

Professor Claire Voisin, of the Collège de France, currently Senior Fellow at the ETH Institute for Theoretical Studies, receives the external page2017 Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences. She shares the prize with János Kollár, of Princeton University. According to the external pagecitation, Kollár and Voisin are awarded the prize «for their remarkable results in many central areas of algebraic geometry, which have transformed the field and led to the solution of long-standing problems that had appeared out of reach.»

Claire Voisin obtained her Ph.D. in 1986 from the Université Paris-Sud, under the supervision of Arnaud Beauville. A member of the French Academy of Science, she is the first female mathematician to be elected professor at the Collège de France, where she holds the new chair of algebraic geometry since 2016. Claire Voisin works in algebraic and complex geometry addressing fundamental questions of mathematics involving the subtle interrelations between algebra, geometry and topology.

Her deep results in major questions of algebraic and complex geometry, such as the Hodge conjecture (a millenium problem) on algebraic cycles, the Kodaira conjecture on deformations of Kähler manifolds and the Green conjecture on curves, were recognized by several prizes, most recently the Heinz Hopf prize in 2015 and the Gold Medal of the CNRS, the highest French recognition in Science, in 2016.

Claire Voisin came to the ETH Institute for Theoretical Studies as a Senior Fellow in January 2017 and will stay until the end of the year. She will give a course on hyper-Kähler manifolds in the Autumn Semester 2017 as part of the Nachdiplom lecture series in mathematics at ETH Zurich.

On the Shaw Prize

The Shaw Prize, established by the Shaw Prize Foundation in Hong Kong in 2002, is awarded yearly in the three categories Astronomy, Life Sciences and Mathematical Sciences to "individuals who are currently active in their respective fields and who have recently achieved distinguished and significant advances, who have made outstanding contributions in academic and scientific research or applications, or who in other domains have achieved excellence."

Previous recipients include Demetrios Christodoulou (2015), Professor of Mathematics and Physics at ETH Zurich and Henryk Iwaniec (2015) of Rutgers University, who was Senior Fellow at the ETH Institute for Theoretical Studies 2014-2015.

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