MIT Mathematics Homepage
Save the Date: 2025 Simons Lecture Series
This spring, we welcome two professors from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne to our annual Simons Lecture Series.
Maryna Viazovska | May 5-7, 2025
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
The Sphere Packing Problem
- May 5: General overview
- May 6: Random sphere packings with symmetries
- May 7: Ideal lattice packings and subconvexity bounds II
Thomas Vidick | May 12-14, 2025
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Surprises in Quantum Complexity Theory
- May 12: Some complexity challenges from quantum information
- May 13: Entanglement, interactive proofs, and approximability
- May 14: Entanglement, error-correcting codes, and proofs
Each day, a reception will be held at 4:30pm in Room 2-290, followed by the 5pm lecture in Room 2-190.
This annual lecture series features presentations by top mathematicians. Many thanks to the late Jim Simons and his wife, Marilyn Simons, for their continued financial support of these lectures.
Latest News
Alan Edelman Is Named 2024 AAAS Fellow
Alan Edelman is recognized as a 2024 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow for distinguished contributions and outstanding breakthroughs in high-performance computing, linear algebra, random matrix theory, computational science, and in particular for the development of the Julia programming language.
The 2024 Fellows class of 471 includes scientists, engineers, and innovators recognized for their scientifically and socially distinguished achievements.
Congratulations, Alan!
MIT Students Continue Putnam Math Winning Streak
For the fifth time in the history of the annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, and for the fifth year in a row, MIT swept all five of the contest’s top spots.
The highest scorers are named Putnam Fellows: Senior Brian Liu and juniors Papon Lapate and Luke Robitaille are now three-time Putnam Fellows, sophomore Jiangqi Dai earned his second win, and first-year Qiao Sun earned his first. Each receives a $2,500 award. This is also the fifth time that any school has had the top 5 students being named Putnam Fellows.
Also coming in first was MIT’s team, made up of Lapate, Robitaille and Sun; Lapate and Robitaille were also on last year’s winning team. This is MIT’s ninth first-place win in the past 11 competitions. Teams consist of the three top scorers from each institution. The institution with the first-place team receives a $25,000 award, and each team member receives $1,000.
First-year Jessica Wan was the top-scoring woman, finishing in the top 25, which earned her the $1,000 Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize. She is the eighth MIT student to receive this honor since the award was created in 1992. This is the sixth year in a row that an MIT woman has won the prize.
Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year's exam!
A full list of the winners can be found on the Putnam website.
Read more in the MIT News.
Six Math Majors Named 2025 Burchard Scholars
Math majors Serena An, Luke Fitzgerald, Yongao Hu, June Kayath, Jiwoo Park, and Leqi (Alexis) Zhou are among 36 MIT students named 2025 Burchard Scholars by the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS).
The Burchard Scholars program recognizes sophomores and juniors who have demonstrated have demonstrated excellence and engagement in the humanistic fields, but can major in science, design, and engineering fields as well as the humanities, arts, and social sciences.
Congratulations, Alexis, Jiwoo, June, Luke, Serena, and Yongao!