YOUNG MATHEMATICIAN TO RECEIVE PRESTIGIOUS AWARD

Youness Lamzouri

OTTAWA, Ontario — The Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS) is pleased to announce that Youness Lamzouri is the recipient of the 2011 Doctoral Prize. The CMS Doctoral Prize recognizes outstanding performance by a doctoral student. Lamzouri will receive his award and present a plenary lecture at the 2011 CMS Winter Meeting in Toronto.

“Students pursuing a doctorate in mathematics are crucial to the growth and development of mathematics in Canada as well as to discovery and advancement in the fields of science and technology," said Jacques Hurtubise, President of the CMS. "Youness Lamzouri has made considerable contributions to mathematics through his doctoral research and is highly deserving of this prize."

"Youness Lamzouri emerges from his doctoral studies as a fully fledged mathematician," said Andrew Granville (University of Montreal), Lamzouri's PhD thesis supervisor. "He is a strong researcher, a very good writer of mathematics, and a clear effective teacher and lecturer who is popular with students at different levels."

Lamzouri's research is in the area of analytic number theory. His thesis provides a first good understanding of extreme values of the Riemann zeta-function (and of all $L$-functions) at the edge of the critical strip, an area involved in some of the most difficult and central problems in analytic number theory.

"There was already a good understanding of the distribution of $|\zeta(1+it)|$ in its full range, as $t$ varies, but Lamzouri was able to give some idea of the distribution of $\zeta(1+it)$ in the same range, showing that it is more dense near the real axis than had perhaps been expected," said Granville.

Another striking aspect of Lamzouri's thesis work is his use of analytic techniques to understand questions on diophantine approximation (and thus settle a dispute as to the basis of the Lang-Waldschmidt conjecture on the limit of linear forms in logarithms); and in using diophantine approximation techniques (the Lang-Waldschmidt conjecture) to greatly extend the range of Fourier analysis involving $p^{it}$'s.

Youness Lamzouri obtained his PhD in mathematics from the University of Montreal in 2009. After graduation, he obtained an NSERC postdoctoral fellowship, and participated in the 2009-2010 special year on Analytic Number Theory at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He was the recipient of the 2004 Jean-Maranda Award for the best finishing undergraduate student in mathematics from the University of Montreal, and the 2006 Carl Herz Prize from the Institut des sciences mathématiques (ISM). Youness is currently a J. L. Doob Research Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.

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About the Canadian Mathematical Society

The CMS is the national mathematics organization whose goal is to promote the advancement, discovery, learning, and application of mathematics. The Society's activities cover the whole spectrum of mathematics including: scientific meetings, research publications, and the promotion of excellence in mathematics education at all levels. The CMS annually sponsors mathematics awards and prizes that recognize outstanding achievements.