A visiting professor of mathematics at the University of Utah has been awarded the Fields Medal for Research in Mathematics, the highest honor that can be given a professional mathematician.
Dr. Shigefumi Mori, research professor at the Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Kyoto, Japan, received the award Tuesday at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Kyoto. Mori is giving one of the principal addresses at the organization's International Congress, which convenes every four years."The Fields Medal is the most prestigious international award in mathematics," said Hugo Rossi, dean of the University of Utah's College of Science. "There is no Nobel Prize in mathematics; the Fields Medal plays the role in our science that the Nobel Prize plays in others."
Mori has spent much of his time during the past four years at Utah and will spend 1990-91 working at the university. His research involves geometry of higher dimensional algebraic varieties and may prove essential to the future of robotics and remote control, Rossi said.
Mori, 39, born in Nagoya, Japan, has also held visiting positions at Harvard, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., the Max Planck Institute in Bonn, West Germany, and at Columbia University.