American Institute of Mathematics
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The American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) was founded in 1994 by John Fry and is located in Palo Alto, California. Privately funded by Fry at inception, in 2002, AIM became one of seven NSF-funded mathematical institutes.
Brian Conrey has been director of the institute since 1997. Helen Moore and David Farmer are co-directors.
The Institute was founded with the primary goal of identifying and solving important mathematical problems. Originally, very small groups of top mathematicians would be assembled to solve a major problem, such as the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture. Now the Institute also runs an extensive programme of week-long workshops on current topics in mathematical research. These workshops rely strongly on interactive problem sessions.
AIM annually awards a five-year fellowship to an "outstanding new PhD pursuing research in an area of pure mathematics". The fellowship is currently worth $4,000 per month for 60 months. AIM also sponsors local mathematics competitions and a yearly meeting for women mathematicians.
[edit] Sponsored research
The American Institute of Mathematics has sponsored fundamental research for high-profile problems in several mathematical areas. Among them are:
[edit] Combinatorics
- The strong perfect graph theorem - proved in 2003 by Maria Chudnovsky, Neil Robertson, Paul Seymour, and Robin Thomas
- Hadwiger's conjecture - research by Neil Robertson and Paul Seymour.
[edit] References
- The AIM home page
- Allyn Jackson, A Different Kind of Institute: The American Institute of Mathematics. The author reports on the history, operations, and future plans of the unique California research institute. Notices of the AMS, December 2005, Volume 52, Number 11
- Math Institute Plans Castle in California
