Professor André Joyal to Receive the 2022 CMS Jeffery-Williams Prize

OTTAWA, Ontario – The Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS) is pleased to announce Professor André Joyal as recipient of the 2022 CMS Jeffery-Williams Prize for his contributions to mathematical research. Professor Joyal will receive his prize and give a lecture at the 2022 CMS Summer meeting in June.

André Joyal studied mathematics at l’Université de Montréal. He obtained a position at l’Université du Québec à Montréal after completing a master’s degree. In 1972, he received a fellowship to study with Jean-Louis Verdier at the ENS in Paris. He is currently Professor Emeritus at UQÀM.

Joyal is known initially for his work on geometric logic, which he introduced with Gonzalo Reyes. His theory of « Species of Structures » was the first application of category theory to combinatorics. He made many important contributions to category theory in collaboration with Myles Tierney, Ross Street and Ieke Moerdijk. He gave a new construction of free lattices from Game Theory.  He introduced the notion of delta-ring in the theory of Witt vectors and, with Terrence Bisson, the notion of Q-ring in the theory of Dyer-Lashof operations. He contributed to the development of higher category theory by showing that category theory can be fully extended to quasi-categories. He is presently working in higher topos theory with a group of collaborators.

Professor Joyal obtained the Urgel-Archambault Prize in 1982. He was named Grand Montréalais de l’avenir pour les sciences in 1983. He obtained the Killam Scholarship in 1985. He is a member of the Royal Society of Canada since 1993. He was named Doctor Honoris Causa by l’Université de Sherbrooke in 2017.

André was visiting professor at Columbia University from 1982 to 1984, under the patronage of Samuel Eilenberg. He visited the Fields Institute in 2007, the CRM of Barcelona in 2008, and l’Université de Paris in 2011. He was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in 2013 and a member of IHES in 2014. More recently, he was a member of the Center for Advanced Study in Oslo.

André Joyal is a remarkable mathematician who has made many important contributions to mathematics across the globe. The CMS is delighted to award him with the 2022 Jeffery-Williams Prize.

About the Jeffery-Williams Prize

The Jeffery-Williams Prize was inaugurated to recognize mathematicians who have made outstanding contributions to mathematical research. The first award was presented in 1968 and is named after Ralph Jeffery and Lloyd Williams, who were two influential CMS Board members.

For information about past recipients visit: Jeffery-Williams Prize