Professor Dennis P. Sullivan

Dennis Sullivan received his B.A. from Rice University in 1963 and Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1965. His academic and research career spans over forty years, during which he taught at Princeton University, University of California at Berkeley and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was also a Visiting Professor at Colorado State University and a Professor at Large at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies) in Paris. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at New York State University in Stony Brook.

Professor Sullivan’s research interests revolve mainly around differential geometry, topology, and dynamical systems. He worked for many years to bring the field of complex dynamics back to life after decades of relative obscurity. By successfully combining analytical and geometric methods, he was able to develop sound mathematical foundations for the study of complex dynamic systems, which relate to some of the most intractable and important problems in the field. Sullivan’s work had been extremely valuable not only for its own sake but also for the vision that had given direction to much exciting current research. His powerful geometric intuition influenced many mathematicians, and his ideas played a key role in contemporary seminal work in this field. He published numerous papers and gave many named lectures.

Professor Sullivan was awarded the Oswald Veblen Prize and the Elie Cartan Prize in Geometry from the National Academy of Sciences. He is also a Member of the US National Academy of Science, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the New York Academy of Sciences, and a former Vice-President of the American Mathematical Society.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.