2003-2004 Aisenstadt Prize goes
to Vinayak Vatsal

français

The André Aisenstadt Prize was awarded to Vinayak Vatsal of the University of British Columbia. Dr. Vatsal obtained his Ph. D. from Princeton University in 1997 under the supervision of A. Wiles. After spending two years as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, he joined the staff at the University of British Columbia in 1999. He works in Arithmetic Algebraic Geometry, more precisely in the study of L-functions of elliptic curves. His most spectacular work to date was on the uniform distribution of Heegner points, in which he introduced in a novel and unexpected fashion ideas from ergodic theory. He was thus able to prove a fundamental conjecture of Mazur concerning the L-functions of elliptic curves over anticyclotomic towers (now the Vatsal-Cornut theorem).The Prize will be awarded to Dr. Vatsal at a ceremony to be held April 2, 2004 at CRM.

Photo: Courtesy UBC Science, ©2002 Hot Digital Dog Studios