Niky Kamran FRSC (born May 22, 1959) is a

Belgian Belgian may refer to: * Something of, or related to, Belgium * Belgians, people from Belgium or of Belgian descent * Languages of Belgium, languages spoken in Belgium, such as Dutch, French, and German *Ancient Belgian language, an extinct languag ...

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

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 ...

whose research concerns

geometric analysis Geometric analysis is a mathematical discipline where tools from differential equations, especially elliptic partial differential equations (PDEs), are used to establish new results in differential geometry and differential topology. The use of l ...

differential geometry Differential geometry is a mathematical discipline that studies the geometry of smooth shapes and smooth spaces, otherwise known as smooth manifolds. It uses the techniques of differential calculus, integral calculus, linear algebra and multili ...

, and

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 ...

. He is a James McGill Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at

McGill University McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill Universit ...

Early life and education

Kamran was born in

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

, Belgium. He earned a licentiate in mathematics from the Université libre de Bruxelles in 1980. He moved to Canada for graduate studies, earning 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 ...

in 1984 from the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario Waterloo is a city in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is one of three cities in the Regional Municipality ...

; his dissertation, titled ''Contributions to the Study of the Separation of Variables and Symmetry Operators for Relativistic Wave Equations on Curved Spacetime'', was jointly supervised by Raymond G. McLenaghan and Robert Debever.

Career

In 1986 he became an assistant professor at Waterloo but then, after spending a year as 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 scholar ...

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

, he moved to McGill in 1989. He was promoted to full professor in 1995 and given the James McGill Professorship in 2003. Kamran won the

Aisenstadt Prize The André Aisenstadt Prize recognizes a young Canadian mathematician's outstanding achievement in pure or applied mathematics. It has been awarded annually since 1992 (except in 1994, when no prize was given) by the Centre de Recherches Mathémat ...

in 1992. He was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Canada The Royal Society of Canada (RSC; french: Société royale du Canada, SRC), also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada (French: ''Académies des arts, des lettres et des sciences du Canada''), is the senior national, bil ...

in 2002 and was awarded a

Killam Killam is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Albert Clements Killam (1849–1908), Canadian lawyer * Amasa Emerson Killam (1834–1922), Canadian politician * Dorothy J. Killam (1900–1965), Canadian philanthropist * Eva Ki ...

Fellowship from 2006 to 2008. In 2012, he became one of the inaugural Fellows 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, ...

. In 2014, Kamran was the winner of the

CRM-Fields-PIMS prize The CRM-Fields-PIMS Prize is the premier Canadian research prize in the mathematical sciences. It is awarded in recognition of exceptional research achievement in the mathematical sciences and is given annually by three Canadian mathematics institu ...

, and in 2019 he was elected a member of the

Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium The Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium (french: Académie royale des sciences, des lettres et des beaux-arts de Belgique, sometimes referred to as ') is the independent learned society of science and arts of the French Comm ...

. That same academy had awarded him in 1988 the mathematics prize of its annual competition for a memoir on the equivalence problem of

Élie Cartan Élie Joseph Cartan (; 9 April 1869 – 6 May 1951) was an influential French mathematician who did fundamental work in the theory of Lie groups, differential systems (coordinate-free geometric formulation of PDEs), and differential geometry. ...

and its applications.

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Kamran, Niky 1959 births Living people 20th-century Belgian mathematicians 21st-century Canadian mathematicians Mathematical physicists Differential geometers Université libre de Bruxelles alumni University of Waterloo alumni University of Waterloo faculty McGill University faculty Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada