Klawe, Pippenger and Benjamin Named to First Class of AMS Fellows

The American Mathematical Society has named its inaugural class of AMS Fellows and it includes Harvey Mudd College President Maria Klawe, Professors Nicholas Pippenger and Art Benjamin and several HMC alumni.

The AMS is the world’s largest and most influential society dedicated to mathematical research, scholarship and education. The AMS Fellows program recognizes society members who have made outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication and utilization of mathematics.

The Fellows will be officially welcomed during the AMS Joint Mathematics Meetings in January.

“I’m thrilled that Nick, Maria and Art were included in the inaugural class of AMS Fellows and are being recognized for their impact on the mathematical sciences, “ said Andrew Bernoff, chair of the HMC Department of Mathematics. “One of the joys of teaching at HMC is being surrounded by incredibly talented and dedicated individuals. It is no surprise to see us well represented in this prestigious group. ”

Maria Klawe

President Klawe has made significant contributions in several areas of mathematics and computer science research, including functional analysis, discrete mathematics, theoretical computer science, human-computer interaction, gender issues in information technology and interactive-multimedia for mathematics education. Her current research focuses on discrete mathematics.

Prior to joining HMC as president, Klawe served as dean of engineering and professor of computer science at Princeton University. Klawe joined Princeton from the University of British Columbia where she served as dean of science from 1998 to 2002, vice president of student and academic services from 1995 to 1998 and head of the Department of Computer Science from 1988 to 1995. Prior to UBC, Klawe spent eight years in industry, serving at IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., first as a research scientist, then as manager of the Discrete Mathematics Group and manager of the Mathematics and Related Computer Science Department.

Klawe is a trustee of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley and has held leadership positions with the American Mathematical Society, the Computing Research Association, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and the Canadian Mathematical Society.

Nicholas Pippenger

Mathematics Professor Nicholas Pippenger’s interests center in discrete mathematics and probability, but also extend into communication theory and theoretical computer science. Prior to joining HMC, Pippenger served as professor of computer science at Princeton University. He joined Princeton from the University of British Columbia, where he served as professor of computer science from 1988 to 2003 and, in 2001, was appointed to a Canada Research Chair. Prior to UBC, he worked for IBM, first as a research staff member and manager of the Theory of Computation Group at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center and then as a research staff member and, later, an IBM Fellow at the Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif. Before IBM, Pippenger was a technical staff member for the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory (currently the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory) in Cambridge, Mass.

Pippenger is the author of “Theories of Computability,” which was published by Cambridge University Press in 1997. He is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Academy of Science), a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. He is a member of the Mathematical Association of America and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

Art Benjamin

Mathematics Professor Art Benjamin’s art of “Mathemagics” has led to many public performances and a guest appearanceon Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report.” His 2005 TEDTalk on Mathemagics is ranked among the Top 20 most-viewed talks. In October, he was named an Honorary Patron of the University Philosophical Society in Dublin, Ireland, in recognition of his contributions to mathematics and entertainment.

Art Benjamin

In 2006, Benjamin won the Beckenbach Book Prize from the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) for his book “Proofs that Really Count: The Art of Combinatorial Proof.” For that same book, in the category of outstanding academic title, he won the 2004 CHOICE award from the American Library Association. In 2000, he received the MAA’s Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics.

Benjamin is also one of 16 prominent members of the mathematical community to be profiled in the book, “Fascinating Mathematical People,” published last year by Princeton University Press.

HMC alumni Peter Loeb ’59, George McNulty ’67 and Jerrold Tunnell ’72 were also named fellows. Loeb is professor of mathematics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, McNulty is professor of mathematics at the University of South Carolina and Tunnel is associate professor of mathematics at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.