Department of Mathematics

Indiana University Bloomington’s Department of Mathematics led all other math departments at U.S. higher learning institutions with four faculty members selected this year as Fellows of the American Mathematical Society.

Professors Hari Bercovici, Michael J. Larsen, Shouhong Wang and Kevin Zumbrun are being recognized by the society and its more than 30,000 individual members and 570 institutional members around the world for their outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication and utilization of mathematics. They will be honored during a ceremony at the largest mathematics meeting in the world, the Jan. 15 to 18 Joint Mathematics Meetings of the AMS and the Mathematical Association of America in Baltimore.

Hari Bercovici
Bercovici is being recognized for his contributions to operator theory and to free probability. While his work in these areas has been theoretical, operator theory is applied in control theory, and free probability is related with research in telecommunications.

Michael J. Larsen
Larsen, named an IU Distinguished Professor in 2011, is being recognized for his contributions to the fields of group theory, number theory, topology and algebraic geometry.

Shouhong Wang
Wang is being recognized for his contribution to the field of geophysical fluid mechanics, the study of large-scale flows as applied to the motion of fluids and gases on Earth and other planets.

Kevin Zumbrun
Zumbrun, chair of the department since 2009, is being recognized for his contributions to continuum mechanics, shock and boundary layer theory. The field of continuum mechanics describes the elasticity and plasticity of solids and the dynamics of liquids and gases by applying fundamental laws of physics like conservation of mass, force equilibrium, and momentum and energy, in order to derive differential equations describing the behavior of those solids, liquids and gases.

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