The Department of Mathematics has given awards to five students.
The Jon A. Bucsela Prize in Mathematics, which recognizes distinguished scholastic achievement, professional promise and enthusiasm for mathematics, was awarded to senior Benjamin Wieland of Wynnewood, PA. The prize was created as a memorial by the parents of Mr. Bucsela, a member of the Class of 1984 from Atlanta, who died as a result of congenital heart problems during his senior year.
Graduate students Alexander Perlin of St. Petersburg, Russia, and Catalin Zara of Suceava, Romania, received the Housman Award for skill and dedication in undergraduate teaching. The award is supported by the Charles L. and Holly Housman Fund.
Bojko Bakalov of Karlovo, Bulgaria, and Kiran Kedlaya of Silver Spring, MD, both of whom expect to receive the PhD this week, received the Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Prize for an outstanding research paper accepted in a major journal by graduate students in mathematics, established by the support of Charles and Jennifer Johnson (Mr. Johnson earned the Building Engineer degree from MIT in 1955).
Mr. Bakalov co-authored a paper in November 1999 entitled "On the Lego-Teichmuller Game" which will be published in a forthcoming issue of Transformation Groups. Mr. Kedlaya's article, entitled "The Algebraic Closure of the Power Series Field in Positive Characteristic" and written in March 1999, is to be published soon in the Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on May 31, 2000.
