Richard P. Stanley, College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Scholar in Mathematics at the University of Miami, has received the 2022 AMS Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement.
The AMS Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement is awarded annually to a mathematics scholar who has amassed years of quality research and academic influence in the field for both colleagues and Ph.D. students.
“Throughout my career it has been gratifying to see many highly talented aspiring mathematicians decide to work in algebraic and enumerative combinatorics,” said Stanley, who is also an emeritus professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Thanks to their efforts, the field has become vastly more sophisticated and intertwined with other areas than when I began my own research. This Steele Prize should be regarded not only as an individual honor, but also as a testament to the efforts of these other researchers who have raised algebraic and enumerative combinatorics to its present lofty level.”
Stanley has revolutionized enumerative combinatorics, revealing deep connections with other branches of mathematics, such as commutative algebra, topology, algebraic geometry, probability, convex geometry, and representation theory. Through his work and research, he has solved important longstanding combinatorial problems, often reviving these other fields with new combinatorial methods. Through his outstanding research and excellent expository works—and many PhD students, collaborators, and colleagues—he continues to influence the field of combinatorics worldwide.
“This is an exceptionally well-deserved honor for Richard,” said Stephen Cantrell, professor and chair of the College of Arts and Sciences Mathematics Department. “The Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement is one of the top prizes in mathematics. Richard’s impact on the field of algebraic and enumerative combinatorics, both in terms of his own research contributions and those of his 60 Ph.D. students, cannot be overstated. We are deeply honored to have him as a colleague.”
Stanley attended the California Institute of Technology as an undergraduate and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1971. After postdocs at MIT and UC Berkeley, Stanley returned in 1973 to MIT, where he remained until retiring in 2018. Stanley is a member of the American Academy of Art and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the AMS.
