Amie Wilkinson (born 1968) is an American mathematician and

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

Mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

. Her research topics include smooth

dynamical system In mathematics, a dynamical system is a system in which a Function (mathematics), function describes the time dependence of a Point (geometry), point in an ambient space. Examples include the mathematical models that describe the swinging of a ...

ergodic theory Ergodic theory (Greek: ' "work", ' "way") is a branch of mathematics that studies statistical properties of deterministic dynamical systems; it is the study of ergodicity. In this context, statistical properties means properties which are expres ...

chaos theory Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary area of scientific study and branch of mathematics focused on underlying patterns and deterministic laws of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, and were once thought to have co ...

, and

semisimple In mathematics, semi-simplicity is a widespread concept in disciplines such as linear algebra, abstract algebra, representation theory, category theory, and algebraic geometry. A semi-simple object is one that can be decomposed into a sum of ''sim ...

Lie group In mathematics, a Lie group (pronounced ) is a group that is also a differentiable manifold. A manifold is a space that locally resembles Euclidean space, whereas groups define the abstract concept of a binary operation along with the additio ...

s. Wilkinson, in collaboration with Christian Bonatti and Sylvain Crovisier, partially resolved the twelfth problem on Stephen Smale's list of mathematical problems for the 21st Century. Wilkinson was named a

fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

(AMS) in 2014. She was elected to the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of Humanities, Letters, Law, and Sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europea ...

in 2019 and the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

in 2021. In 2020, she received the

Levi L. Conant Prize The Levi L. Conant Prize is a mathematics prize of the American Mathematical Society, which has been awarded since 2000 for outstanding expository papers published in the ''Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society'' or the ''Notices of the Amer ...

of the AMS for her overview article on the modern theory of

Lyapunov exponent In mathematics, the Lyapunov exponent or Lyapunov characteristic exponent of a dynamical system is a quantity that characterizes the rate of separation of infinitesimally close trajectories. Quantitatively, two trajectories in phase space with ini ...

s and their applications to diverse areas of dynamical systems and mathematical physics.Levi L. Conant Prize 2020
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Biography

She received a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

degree in mathematics from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

in 1989 and a PhD in Mathematics from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 1995 under the direction of Charles C. Pugh. She is currently a professor of mathematics at the

and was previously a professor of mathematics at Northwestern University.

Work

Wilkinson's work focuses on the geometric and statistical properties of

diffeomorphism In mathematics, a diffeomorphism is an isomorphism of smooth manifolds. It is an invertible function that maps one differentiable manifold to another such that both the function and its inverse are differentiable. Definition Given two m ...

s and flows with a particular emphasis on stable

ergodicity In mathematics, ergodicity expresses the idea that a point of a moving system, either a dynamical system or a stochastic process, will eventually visit all parts of the space that the system moves in, in a uniform and random sense. This implies th ...

and partial

hyperbolicity In mathematics, a hyperbolic metric space is a metric space satisfying certain metric relations (depending quantitatively on a nonnegative real number δ) between points. The definition, introduced by Mikhael Gromov, generalizes the metric properti ...

. In a series of papers with Christian Bonatti and Sylvain Crovisier, Wilkinson studied centralizers of diffeomorphisms settling the ''C''¹ case of the twelfth problem on Stephen Smale's list of mathematical problems for the 21st Century.

Awards

Wilkinson was the recipient of the 2011 Satter Prize in Mathematics, in part for her work with Keith Burns on stable ergodicity of partially hyperbolic systems. She gave an invited talk, "Dynamical Systems and Ordinary Differential Equations", in the

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the Nevanlinna Prize (to be rename ...

2010 in

Hyderabad, India Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the '' de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River, in the northern part of Southern In ...

. In 2013 she became a

of the

, for "contributions to dynamical systems". In 2019 she was elected to the

. In 2020 she received the

of the AMS. She was elected to the

in 2021. Wilkinson has been featured in articles in

Quanta Magazine ''Quanta Magazine'' is an editorially independent online publication of the Simons Foundation covering developments in physics, mathematics, biology and computer science. ''Undark Magazine'' described ''Quanta Magazine'' as "highly regarded for ...

. Wilkinson is a member of the Board of Advisers of

Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it i ...

Personal life

Wilkinson married

Benson Farb Benson Stanley Farb (born October 25, 1967) is an American mathematician at the University of Chicago. His research fields include geometric group theory and low-dimensional topology. Early life A native of Norristown, Pennsylvania, Farb earne ...

on December 28, 1996. They are professors in the same department.

References

External links