Lauren Williams (mathematician)

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Lauren K. Williams
Lauren Williams 2015 (cropped).JPG
Williams in 2015
Bornc. 1978 (age 46–47)
NationalityAmerican
Alma materHarvard University (B.A., 2000)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D., 2005)
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
Institutions Harvard University
Thesis Combinatorial aspects of total positivity  (2005)
Doctoral advisor Richard P. Stanley

Lauren Kiyomi Williams (born c. 1978) is an American mathematician known for her work on cluster algebras, tropical geometry, algebraic combinatorics, amplituhedra, and the positive Grassmannian. [1] She is Dwight Parker Robinson Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University. [2] She was awarded a MacArthur fellowship in 2025.

Contents

Education

Williams's father is an engineer; her mother is third-generation Japanese American. She grew up in Los Angeles, where her interest in mathematics was sparked by winning a fourth-grade mathematics contest. [1] She graduated as valedictorian of Palos Verdes Peninsula High School in 1996. [2] As a high school student, Williams attended the 1994 Research Science Institute at MIT, [3] where she conducted research with Satomi Okazaki, a student of her eventual Ph.D. advisor Richard P. Stanley. [1] She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 2000 with a A.B. in mathematics [2] and in 2001 completed Part III of the Mathematical Tripos with distinction at Cambridge University in England. In 2005 she received her Ph.D. from MIT under the supervision of Stanley. [4] Her dissertation was titled Combinatorial Aspects of Total Positivity.

Work

After postdoctoral positions at the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard, Williams rejoined the Berkeley mathematics department as an assistant professor in 2009, and was promoted to associate professor in 2013 and then full professor in 2016. [2]

Starting in the fall of 2018, she rejoined the Harvard mathematics department as a full professor, making her the second ever tenured female math professor at Harvard. The first, Sophie Morel, left Harvard in 2012. [5]

Along with colleagues Olya Mandelshtam (her former student, now an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo) and Sylvie Corteel, in 2018 Williams developed a new characterization of both symmetric and nonsymmetric Macdonald polynomials using the combinatorial exclusion process. [6]

Awards

In 2012, she became one of the inaugural fellows of the American Mathematical Society. [7] She is the 2016 winner of the Association for Women in Mathematics and Microsoft Research Prize in Algebra and Number Theory. [8] In 2022 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. [9] In 2025, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. [10]

Selected publications

References

  1. 1 2 3 Hartnett, Kevin (December 16, 2020), "A Mathematician's Unanticipated Journey Through the Physical World", Quanta Magazine
  2. 1 2 3 4 Lauren K. Williams , retrieved September 23, 2018.
  3. ↑ RSI 1994 , retrieved October 9, 2025
  4. ↑ Lauren Williams at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  5. ↑ "Math Dept Hires 2nd-Ever Female Tenured Prof, Ending Six-Year Drought", The Harvard Crimson, retrieved May 1, 2018
  6. ↑ Corteel, Sylvie; Mandelshtam, Olya; Williams, Lauren (2018), "From multiline queues to Macdonald polynomials via the exclusion process", arXiv: 1811.01024 [math.CO]
  7. ↑ List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society , retrieved May 31, 2016.
  8. ↑ Lauren Williams wins the second AWM-Microsoft Research Prize in Algebra and Number Theory, Association for Women in Mathematics, June 3, 2015, retrieved May 31, 2016.
  9. ↑ Durrick, Mallory. "Announcements". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved July 4, 2022.
  10. ↑ Towfighi, Michaela (October 8, 2025), "MacArthur Foundation Announces 2025 'Genius Grant' Winners", The New York Times
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