Oded Schramm (December 10, 1961 – September 1, 2008) () was an
Israeli-
American mathematician known for the invention of the
Schramm–Loewner evolution (SLE) and for working at the intersection of
conformal field theory and
probability theory.
Biography
Schramm was born in
Jerusalem in
Israel.
Research
A constant theme in Schramm's research was the exploration of relations between discrete models and their continuous scaling limits, which for a number of models turn out to be
conformally invariant.
Schramm's most significant contribution is the invention of Schramm–Loewner evolution, a tool which has paved the way for mathematical proofs of conjectured scaling limit relations on models from statistical mechanics such as self-avoiding random walk and percolation. This technique has had a profound impact on the field. was in complex analysis, but he made contributions in many other areas of pure mathematics, although self-taught in those areas. Frequently he would prove a result by himself before reading the literature to obtain an appropriate credit. Often his proof was original or more elegant than the original.
Besides conformally invariant planar processes and SLE, he made fundamental contributions to several topics:
* Circle packings and discrete conformal geometry.
Embeddings of Gromov hyperbolic spaces.
Percolation, Uniform and Minimal Spanning Trees and Forests, harmonic functions on Cayley graphs of infinite finitely generated groups (especially non-amenable groups) and the hyperbolic plane.
Limits of sequences of finite graphs.
Noise sensitivity of Boolean functions, with applications to dynamical percolation.
Random turn games (e.g. random turn hex) and the Infinity Laplacian equation.
Random permutations.
Awards and honors
Erdős Prize (1996)
Salem Prize (2001)
Clay Research Award (2002), for his
work in combining analytic power with geometric insight in the field of random walks, percolation, and probability theory in general, especially for formulating stochastic Loewner evolution. His work opens new doors and reinvigorates research in these fields. For his contributions to discrete conformal geometry, where he discovered new classes of circle patterns described by integrable systems and proved the ultimate results on convergence to the corresponding conformal mappings, and for the discovery of the Stochastic Loewner Process as a candidate for scaling limits in two dimensional statistical mechanics.
SIAM George Pólya Prize (2006), with
Gregory Lawler and
Wendelin Werner, for
groundbreaking work on the development and application of stochastic Loewner evolution (SLE). Of particular note is the rigorous establishment of the existence and conformal invariance of critical scaling limits of a number of 2D lattice models arising in statistical physics.
Ostrowski Prize (2007)
Elected in 2008 as a foreign member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Conferences and symposia
Microsoft Research sponsored a two-day conference in Schramm's memory on August 30-31, 2009.
On December 15-23, 2009, the 14th Midrasha Mathematicae, The Mathematics of Oded Schramm, will be held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. (Poster and preliminary program)
Selected publications
| year=2000 | journal=Israel Journal of Mathematics | issn=0021-2172 | volume=118 | pages=221–288 | doi=10.1007/BF02803524}}. Schramm's paper introducing the
Schramm–Loewner evolution.
| year=2007 | chapter=Conformally invariant scaling limits: an overview and a collection of problems | pages=513–543|url=http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0602151|isbn= 978-3-03719-022-7 }}
References
External links
Tutorial: SLE, video of MSRI lecture given jointly by Schramm, Lawler and Werner in the special session at the Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley in May 2001.
Conformally Invariant Scaling Limits and SLE, MSRI presentation by Oded Schramm, May 2001.
Terence Tao, "Oded Schramm".
Publication list
Oded Schramm Memorial page
Oded Schramm Memorial blog
Oded Schramm Memorial Workshop – August 30–31, 2009 at Microsoft Research
Oded Schramm obituary in the IMS Bulletin
Category:1961 births
Category:2008 deaths
Category:Probability theorists
Category:Israeli mathematicians
Category:20th-century mathematicians
Category:21st-century mathematicians
Category:Princeton University alumni
Category:People from Jerusalem
Category:Mountaineering deaths
Category:Sports deaths in Washington (U.S. state)
Category:Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
