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MEDIA RELEASE
October 2, 2002

TWO HONOURED FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENTS

The winner of the Canadian Mathematical Society's 2002 Doctoral Prize is Dr. David Kerr and Dr. Peter Lancaster will receive the CMS Distinguished Service Award for 2002. Both awards will be presented at the CMS 2002 Winter Meeting Banquet on December 8th at the Ottawa Marriott Hotel.


2002 CMS Doctoral Prize - Dr. David Kerr (University of Toronto)

The CMS Doctoral Prize recognizes outstanding performance by a doctoral student who graduated from a Canadian university.

Born in Ottawa, Dr. Kerr obtained his Bachelor's degree from the University of Waterloo in 1994, his Master's degree from the University of Toronto in 1995, and his Ph. D. from the University of Toronto in 2001 under the supervision of Dr. George Elliott.

He received an Ontario Graduate Student Award in 1999 and NSERC post-graduate scholarships from 1994 to 1998. He currently holds an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship which is being spent at the University of Tokyo and the University of Rome.

In his doctoral thesis in operator theory ( "Pressure for automorphisms of exact C*-algebras and a non-commutative variational principle") Dr. Kerr was concerned with the notion of pressure and dynamical entropy in the context of non-commutative dynamical systems. He proposed the first systematic formulation in the non-commutative setting of the variational principle. The key to his approach was the definition of the dynamical pressure of exact C*-algebras which extended the notion of both topological pressure from ergodic theory and Voiculescu-Brown operator-algebraic approximation entropy. His results have been called a definitive contribution to his field of study.

David Kerr has succeeded in making a significant contribution to a competitive field of research and he is cited for his mastery of a difficult area of research as well as his mathematical maturity and judgement.


2002 CMS Distinguished Service Award - Dr. Peter Lancaster (University of Calgary)

The CMS distinguished service award is to recognize individuals who have made sustained and significant contributions to the Canadian mathematical community.

Peter Lancaster was born in Appleby, England, the third of four children. The family moved around northern England as necessitated by his father's work in insurance and eventually settled in Liverpool. Dr. Lancaster entered Liverpool University's School of Architecture, transferred to the honours mathematics program and completed his first degree in 1952.

From 1952 to 1957, Dr. Lancaster worked as an aerodynamicist at the English Electric Company (now British Aerospace) where he began a research career in mathematics motivated by physical problems such as aircraft vibration and stability, and related computational problems. Dr. Lancaster was appointed Assistant Lecturer in Mathematics at the University of Malaya (now the National University of Singapore) and advanced through the ranks to become Senior Lecturer in 1961. His dissertation on the theory of lambda matrices led to a Ph. D. from the University of Singapore in 1964.

In 1962, Dr. Lancaster was appointed Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the fledgling Calgary campus of the University of Alberta, which subsequently became the University of Calgary in 1965. He was instrumental in the development and growth of this young department, was promoted to full professor in 1967, and he has remained at Calgary ever since.

Dr. Lancaster's work over the years includes research in the mathematical analysis of vibrations and gyroscopic systems, matrix analysis and spectral theory, matrix and operator polynomials, solution of Riccati equations, systems theory and control, as well as numerical analysis and approximation theory. He has over 160 publications, 11 research monographs and textbooks, and the supervision of 9 doctoral students, 6 master students, and 6 postdoctoral fellows. His text on the Theory of Matrices was translated into Russian and widely circulated in the USSR which resulted in him obtaining significant recognition in the former Soviet Union.

He has given invited talks at over 80 different institutions in 17 countries and held several Visiting Professorships at universities throughout the world. His work has been recognized by many awards, including the Killam Resident Fellow (University of Calgary-1977), Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (1984), Faculty of Science Award of Excellence in Research (University of Calgary-1991), CMS Jeffery-Williams Prize (1991), Dozor Visiting Fellow (Ben Gurion University-1995), Toeplitz Lecturer (University of Tel Aviv, 1997), Humboldt Research Award (Technical University of Darmstadt-2000), and recipient of the Hans Schneider Prize of the International Linear Algebra Society (2002)

His outstanding research career is matched with a remarkable history of service to the mathematical community. He has been the Editor for several journals and he has organized over a dozen research conferences. He was CMS Vice-President from 1973 to 1975, CMS President from 1979 to 1981, Vice-President of the Canadian Applied Mathematical Society from 1993 to 1995, he served on several peer-review committees for NSERC, committees for the Royal Society of Canada as well as being a member of the boards of the Fields Institute (1992-1996) and the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences, since its inception in 1995.

He has been Emeritus Professor at the University of Calgary since 1994. Dr. Lancaster maintains a highly active research program at the University of Calgary and enjoys the fruits of retirement with his wife Diane.


For more information contact:

Dr. Graham P. Wright, Executive Director
Canadian Mathematical Society
Tel: (613) 562-5702
Email: director@cms.math.ca