Craig Arnold Tracy (born September 9, 1945) is an American mathematician, known for his contributions to

mathematical physics Mathematical physics refers to the development of mathematics, mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' defines the field as "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and t ...

and

probability theory Probability theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability. Although there are several different probability interpretations, probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical manner by expressing it through a set o ...

. Born in

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

, he moved as infant to

Missouri Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...

where he grew up and obtained a

B.Sc. A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

from

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou, MU, or Missouri) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus Universit ...

(1967). He studied as a

Woodrow Wilson Fellow The Institute for Citizens & Scholars (formerly known as the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation) is a nonpartisan, non-profit based in Princeton, New Jersey that aims to strengthen American democracy by “cultivating the talent, ideas, ...

at the

Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York system's ...

where he obtained a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

on the thesis entitled ''Spin-Spin Scale-Functions in the

Ising Ising is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Ernst Ising (1900–1998), German physicist * Gustav Ising (1883–1960), Swedish accelerator physicist * Rudolf Ising, animator for ''MGM'', together with Hugh Harman often credited ...

and XY-Models'' (1973) advised by

Barry M. McCoy Barry Malcolm McCoy (born 14 December 1940 in Trenton, New Jersey) is an American physicist, known for his contributions to classical statistical mechanics, integrable models and conformal field theories. He earned a B.Sc. from California Instit ...

, in which (also jointly with

Tai Tsun Wu Tai Tsun Wu (, September 1, 1933) is a Chinese-born American physicist and applied physicist well known for his contributions to high-energy nuclear physics and statistical mechanics. Born in Shanghai, he studied electrical engineering at Univ ...

and Eytan Barouch) he studied Painlevé functions in exactly solvable statistical mechanical models. He then was on the faculty of

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...

(1978–84) before joining

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...

(1984) where he is now a professor. With

Harold Widom Harold Widom (September 23, 1932 – January 20, 2021) was an American mathematician best known for his contributions to operator theory and random matrices. He was appointed to the Department of Mathematics at the University of California, Santa ...

he worked on the

asymptotic analysis In mathematical analysis, asymptotic analysis, also known as asymptotics, is a method of describing limiting behavior. As an illustration, suppose that we are interested in the properties of a function as becomes very large. If , then as beco ...

Toeplitz determinant In linear algebra, a Toeplitz matrix or diagonal-constant matrix, named after Otto Toeplitz, is a matrix (mathematics), matrix in which each descending diagonal from left to right is constant. For instance, the following matrix is a Toeplitz matrix: ...

s and their various operator theoretic generalizations. This work gave them both the

George Pólya George Pólya (; hu, Pólya György, ; December 13, 1887 – September 7, 1985) was a Hungarian mathematician. He was a professor of mathematics from 1914 to 1940 at ETH Zürich and from 1940 to 1953 at Stanford University. He made fundamental ...

and the

Norbert Wiener Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894 – March 18, 1964) was an American mathematician and philosopher. He was a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher i ...

prizes, and the

Tracy–Widom distribution The Tracy–Widom distribution is a probability distribution from random matrix theory introduced by . It is the distribution of the normalized largest eigenvalue of a random Hermitian matrix. The distribution is defined as a Fredholm determinant. ...

is named after them.

Awards

*Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, 1967–68. *

Japan Society for the Promotion of Science The is an Independent Administrative Institution in Japan, established for the purpose of contributing to the advancement of science in all fields of the natural and social sciences and the humanities.JSPSweb page History The Japan Society for ...

Fellowship 1991 *2002

Pólya Prize (SIAM) Pólya Prize may refer to: *George Pólya Prize, awarded by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) *Pólya Prize (LMS), awarded by the London Mathematical Society See also * George Pólya Award The George Pólya Award is pres ...

shared with

*Fellow

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 ...

2006 *

Norbert Wiener Prize The Norbert Wiener Prize in Applied Mathematics is a $5000 prize awarded, every three years, for an outstanding contribution to "applied mathematics in the highest and broadest sense." It was endowed in 1967 in honor of Norbert Wiener by MIT's ma ...

2007, shared with

. *Fellow 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, ...

, 2012List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
retrieved 2013-08-27.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tracy, Craig 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians 1945 births University of Missouri alumni Mathematicians from Missouri Stony Brook University alumni Dartmouth College faculty University of California, Davis faculty Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Living people Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics