Laurentius Petrus Dignus "Lou" van den Dries (born May 26, 1951) is a

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

working in model theory. He is a professor emeritus of mathematics at the

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univer ...

Education

Van den Dries began his undergraduate studies in 1969 at

Utrecht University Utrecht University (UU; nl, Universiteit Utrecht, formerly ''Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht'') is a public research university in Utrecht, Netherlands. Established , it is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. In 2018, it had an enrollme ...

, and in 1978 completed his PhD there under the supervision of

Dirk van Dalen Dirk van Dalen (born 20 December 1932, Amsterdam) is a Dutch mathematician and historian of science. Van Dalen studied mathematics and physics and astronomy at the University of Amsterdam. Inspired by the work of Brouwer and Heyting, he receive ...

with a dissertation entitled ''Model Theory of Fields''.

Career and research

Van den Dries was a member of the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent schola ...

in the 1982–1983 academic year. He joined the faculty of the

in 1986 and became a professor in its Center for Advanced Study in 1998. In 2021, van den Dries retired and became a professor emeritus. Van den Dries is most known for his seminal work in

o-minimality In mathematical logic, and more specifically in model theory, an infinite structure (''M'',<,...) which is totally ordered by < is called an o-minimal structure if and only if every

, but he has also made contributions to the model theory of -adic fields, valued fields, and

finite fields In mathematics, a finite field or Galois field (so-named in honor of Évariste Galois) is a field that contains a finite number of elements. As with any field, a finite field is a set on which the operations of multiplication, addition, subt ...

, and to the study of

transseries In mathematics, the field \mathbb^ of logarithmic-exponential transseries is a non-Archimedean ordered differential field which extends comparability of asymptotic growth rates of elementary nontrigonometric functions to a much broader class of ob ...

. With

Alex Wilkie Alex James Wilkie FRS (born 1948 in Northampton) is a British mathematician known for his contributions to model theory and logic. Previously Reader in Mathematical Logic at the University of Oxford, he was appointed to the Fielden Chair of Pur ...

, he improved

Gromov's theorem on groups of polynomial growth In geometric group theory, Gromov's theorem on groups of polynomial growth, first proved by Mikhail Gromov, characterizes finitely generated groups of ''polynomial'' growth, as those groups which have nilpotent subgroups of finite index. Statement ...

using nonstandard methods. Van den Dries was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1990 and 2018, and delivered the Tarski Lectures at 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 2017.

Awards and honours

Van den Dries has been a corresponding member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1993. He was awarded the Shoenfield Prize from the

Association for Symbolic Logic The Association for Symbolic Logic (ASL) is an international organization of specialists in mathematical logic and philosophical logic. The ASL was founded in 1936, and its first president was Alonzo Church. The current president of the ASL is ...

in 2016 for his chapter "Lectures on the Model Theory of Valued Fields" in ''Model Theory in Algebra, Analysis and Arithmetic'', edited by Dugald Macpherson and Carlo Toffalori. Van den Dries was jointly awarded the 2018

Karp Prize The Association for Symbolic Logic (ASL) is an international organization of specialists in mathematical logic and philosophical logic. The ASL was founded in 1936, and its first president was Alonzo Church. The current president of the ASL i ...

with

Matthias Aschenbrenner Matthias Aschenbrenner (born 1972 in Bad Kötzting) is a German-American mathematician. He is a professor of mathematics at the University of Vienna and director of the logic group there. His research interests include differential algebra and m ...

and

Joris van der Hoeven Joris van der Hoeven (born 1971) is a Dutch mathematician and computer scientist, specializing in algebraic analysis and computer algebra. He is the primary developer of GNU TeXmacs. Education and career Joris van der Hoeven received in 1997 hi ...

"for their work in model theory, especially on asymptotic differential algebra and the model theory of transseries".

Ethics training

Since 2004, employees of the state of

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...

, including University of Illinois faculty, are required by the State Officials and Employees Ethics Act to complete ethics training annually. From 2006 to 2009, van den Dries refused to complete this training, arguing that

mandatory ethics training for adults is an Orwellian concept and has no place in a civil and free society. It is Big Brother reducing us to the status of children. Symptoms: monitoring of the test taking, the 'award' of a diploma for passing the test. It betrays a totalitarian urge on those in power to infantilize the rest of us. An unfortunate byproduct of the computer revolution is that it has given new tools in the hands of unwise rulers to annoy us for no good reason. Rather than go meekly along, we should vigorously protest and resist whenever demeaning schemes like ethics training rear their ugly head.

Eventually, van den Dries settled with the Illinois Executive Ethics Commission, which enforces the ethics act, for a $500 fine, noting that "while many of my colleagues agree that this ethics training is a big waste of time and money, they didn't really take the steps I took in trying to fight it. So without active support from my colleagues, it became too time consuming and costly (lawyers fees) to continue my resistance." Van den Dries was the first state employee to be fined by the Illinois Executive Ethics Commission for failing to complete the mandatory training.

Selected publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dries, Lou van den Living people University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty Utrecht University alumni Dutch mathematicians Dutch logicians Mathematical logicians Model theorists Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Tarski lecturers 1951 births