Biography:Ruth J. Williams

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Short description: American mathematician
Ruth J. Williams
Born
Alma materUniversity of Melbourne
Stanford University
Known forProbability theory
Stochastic process
AwardsJohn von Neumann Theory Prize
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsUniversity of California, San Diego
ThesisBrownian motion in a wedge with oblique reflection at the boundary (1983)
Doctoral advisorChung Kai-lai

Ruth Jeannette Williams is an Australian-born American mathematician at the University of California, San Diego where she holds the Charles Lee Powell Chair as a Distinguished Professor of Mathematics. Her research concerns probability theory and stochastic processes.[1]

Early life and education

Williams was born in Australia and moved to the United States in 1978.[2]

Williams graduated from the University of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Sciences, with honors, in 1976 and a Master of Science in mathematics in 1978.[3] Williams went on to earn her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1983, under the supervision of Chung Kai-lai.[4][5]

Recognition

Williams was president of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics from 2011 to 2012.

Williams is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Mathematical Society, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences,[6] and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.[7] In 1998 she was an Invited Speaker of the International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin.[8] Williams was an American Mathematical Society (AMS) Council member at large.[9]

Her other awards and honors include:

  • Alfred P. Sloan Fellow (1988) [10]
  • Guggenheim Fellow (2001)[11]
  • Best Publication Award of the INFORMS Applied Probability Society (2007), jointly with Amber L. Puha and H. Christian Gromoll[12]
  • John von Neumann Theory Prize (2016), jointly with Martin I. Reiman for "seminal research contributions over the past several decades, to the theory and applications of stochastic networks/systems and their heavy traffic approximations".[12][13]
  • Honorary Doctorate from the University of Melbourne (2018) [2]
  • Award for the Advancement of Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences (2017), annual INFORMS meeting[12]
  • Honorary Doctor of Science degree from La Trobe University in Australia[12]
  • National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator[12]

References

  1. Ruth Williams, UCSD, retrieved 2014-12-24.
  2. 2.0 2.1 Cashin, Kasey (2018-12-11). "Ruth Williams receives Honorary Doctorate" (in en). https://ms.unimelb.edu.au/news/ruth-williams-recieves-honorary-doctorate. 
  3. "Citation in support of Ruth Williams' nomination for an Honorary Doctorate". December 11, 2018. https://ms.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/2942569/Citation-Ruth-Williams-UPDATED-new.pdf. 
  4. Ruth Jeannette Williams at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  5. Williams, Ruth Jeannette (1983). Brownian motion in a wedge with oblique reflection at the boundary / (Thesis). Stanford University.
  6. Faculty profile, UCSD, retrieved 2014-12-24.
  7. SIAM Announces Class of 2020 Fellows, SIAM, March 31, 2020, https://sinews.siam.org/Details-Page/siam-announces-class-of-2020-fellows, retrieved 2020-06-12 
  8. Williams, Ruth J. (1998). "Reflecting diffusions and queueing networks". Doc. Math. (Bielefeld) Extra Vol. ICM Berlin, 1998, vol. III. pp. 321–330. https://www.elibm.org/ft/10011589000. 
  9. "AMS Committees" (in en). http://www.ams.org/about-us/governance/committees/mal-past.html. 
  10. "Past Fellows". https://sloan.org/past-fellows. 
  11. "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Ruth J. Williams" (in en-US). https://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/ruth-j-williams/. 
  12. 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 "Ruth Williams | ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers". https://acems.org.au/our-people/ruth-williams. 
  13. "Reiman, Williams share von Neumann Prize", INFORMS News (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) 43 (6), December 2016, https://www.informs.org/ORMS-Today/Public-Articles/December-Volume-43-Number-6/INFORMS-News-Reiman-Williams-share-von-Neumann-Prize