PROVIDENCE – David Mumford, Brown University professor emeritus of applied mathematics, has been named one of 10 winners of the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest scientific honor.
Mumford, who joined the Brown faculty in 1996, will receive the medal from President Barack Obama in a White House ceremony later this year, the university said.
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He is known in academic circles for inventing geometric invariant theory, a key tool in moduli theory, the study of how the geometric structures in algebraic geometry vary, according to Brown. His studies on the moduli space of curves have been an important tool in string theory.
“As collaborator and catalyst, David Mumford was an early contributor to fields of inquiry that have blossomed at Brown — brain science, computer vision, neurobiology, cognitive science, the biology and psychology of perception — and to his own areas of pure and applied mathematics,” Brown President Ruth J. Simmons said in a statement. “He continues to inspire collaborators in many fields, former students now in productive careers, and his professional colleagues in the United States and abroad.”
The National Medal of Science is the latest of numerous honors for Mumford, a native of Sussex, England.
He won the Fields Medal, the highest award in mathematics, in 1974, and a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 1987.
More recently, Mumford received the Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences in 2006, the Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition in 2007, and the Wolf Foundation Prize in Mathematics in 2008, a honor presented by Israeli President Shimon Peres.
The National Medal of Science was established by Congress in August 1959 to be conferred directly by the president.
Previous recipients include behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner, geneticist Barbara McClintock, immunologist Linus Pauling, aeronautical engineer Wernher von Braun, cosmologist James Van Allen, molecular biologist James D. Watson, and mathematician Oscar Zariski, who was Mumford’s thesis adviser. In all, 441 scientists have received the National Medal of Science.
Mumford’s work in computer vision and pattern theory introduced new mathematical tools and models from analysis and differential geometry, the university said.
His work in neurobiology in collaboration with other researchers led to insights about the nature of computation in the human brain, and he helped start Brown’s Brain Science Program with John Donoghue, Elie Bienenstock, Stuart Geman, and others.
