Alain Connes is a French mathematician, and a theoretical physicist, known for his contributions to the study of operator algebras and noncommutative geometry. He is a professor at the Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, Ohio State University and Vanderbilt University. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1982.
Free probability is a mathematical theory that studies non-commutative random variables. The "freeness" or free independence property is the analogue of the classical notion of independence, and it is connected with free products. This theory was initiated by Dan Voiculescu around 1986 in order to attack the free group factors isomorphism problem, an important unsolved problem in the theory of operator algebras. Given a free group on some number of generators, we can consider the von Neumann algebra generated by the group algebra, which is a type II1 factor. The isomorphism problem asks whether these are isomorphic for different numbers of generators. It is not even known if any two free group factors are isomorphic. This is similar to Tarski's free group problem, which asks whether two different non-abelian finitely generated free groups have the same elementary theory.
In probability theory and mathematical physics, a random matrix is a matrix-valued random variable—that is, a matrix in which some or all elements are random variables. Many important properties of physical systems can be represented mathematically as matrix problems. For example, the thermal conductivity of a lattice can be computed from the dynamical matrix of the particle-particle interactions within the lattice.
Lloyd Nicholas Trefethen is an American mathematician, professor of numerical analysis and head of the Numerical Analysis Group at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford.
Free convolution is the free probability analog of the classical notion of convolution of probability measures. Due to the non-commutative nature of free probability theory, one has to talk separately about additive and multiplicative free convolution, which arise from addition and multiplication of free random variables. These operations have some interpretations in terms of empirical spectral measures of random matrices.
In the mathematical theory of free probability, the notion of free independence was introduced by Dan Voiculescu. The definition of free independence is parallel to the classical definition of independence, except that the role of Cartesian products of measure spaces is played by the notion of a free product of (non-commutative) probability spaces.
Connes' embedding problem, formulated by Alain Connes in the 1970s, is a major problem in von Neumann algebra theory. During that time, the problem was reformulated in several different areas of mathematics. Dan Voiculescu developing his free entropy theory found that Connes’ embedding problem is related to the existence of microstates. Some results of von Neumann algebra theory can be obtained assuming positive solution to the problem. The problem is connected to some basic questions in quantum theory, which led to the realization that it also has important implications in computer science.
The Maryam Mirzakhani Prize in Mathematics is awarded by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences "for excellence of research in the mathematical sciences published within the past ten years." Named after the Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, the prize has been awarded every four years since 1988.
In mathematics, the Weyl–von Neumann theorem is a result in operator theory due to Hermann Weyl and John von Neumann. It states that, after the addition of a compact operator or Hilbert–Schmidt operator of arbitrarily small norm, a bounded self-adjoint operator or unitary operator on a Hilbert space is conjugate by a unitary operator to a diagonal operator. The results are subsumed in later generalizations for bounded normal operators due to David Berg and Dan-Virgil Voiculescu. The theorem and its generalizations were one of the starting points of operator K-homology, developed first by Lawrence G. Brown, Ronald Douglas and Peter Fillmore and, in greater generality, by Gennadi Kasparov.
Alan Stuart Edelman is an American mathematician and computer scientist. He is a professor of applied mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Principal Investigator at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) where he leads a group in applied computing. In 2004, he founded a business called Interactive Supercomputing which was later acquired by Microsoft. Edelman is a fellow of American Mathematical Society (AMS), Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), for his contributions in numerical linear algebra, computational science, parallel computing, and random matrix theory. He is one of the cocreators of the technical programming language Julia.
Masamichi Takesaki is a Japanese mathematician working in the theory of operator algebras.
Uffe Valentin Haagerup was a mathematician from Denmark.
Sorin Teodor Popa is a Romanian American mathematician working on operator algebras. He is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Alice Guionnet is a French mathematician known for her work in probability theory, in particular on large random matrices.
Roland Speicher is a German mathematician, known for his work on free probability theory. He is a professor at the Saarland University.
Gennadiy Mykhailovych Feldman is a Soviet and Ukrainian mathematician, corresponding member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Doctor of Science in Physics and Mathematics, Professor, Head of the Mathematical Division of B. Verkin Institute for Low Temperature Physics and Engineering of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
Roberto Longo is an Italian mathematician, specializing in operator algebras and quantum field theory.
Dan Burghelea is a Romanian-American mathematician, academic, and researcher. He is an Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Ohio State University.
Edward George Effros was an American mathematician, specializing in operator algebras and representation theory. His research included "C*-algebras theory and operator algebras, descriptive set theory, Banach space theory, and quantum information."
