Oscar Randal-Williams

British mathematician

Whitehead Prize (2017)
Leverhulme Prize (2017)
Dannie Heineman Prize (2019)
Oberwolfach Prize (2019)
Clay Research Award (2022)

Academic backgroundAlma materUniversity of OxfordThesisStable moduli spaces of manifolds (2009)Doctoral advisorUlrike TillmannAcademic workDisciplineMathematicianInstitutionsUniversity of Cambridge Websitehttps://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~or257/

Oscar Randal-Williams FRS is a British mathematician and professor at the University of Cambridge,^[1] working in topology.

Career

He studied mathematics at the University of Oxford (MMath 2006, DPhil 2009), where he wrote his doctoral thesis Stable moduli spaces of manifolds under the supervision of Ulrike Tillmann.^[2] Since 2012 he has been at the University of Cambridge, since 2017 as reader, since 2020 as professor,^[3] and since 2024 as the Sadleirian Professor of Pure Mathematics.^[4]

In joint work with Søren Galatius, he studied moduli spaces of manifolds, leading to a sequence of papers about which his coauthor talked at the ICM 2014.^[5]

Awards and honours

In 2017, he received^[6] a Whitehead Prize from the London Mathematical Society and a Philip Leverhulme Prize,^[7]^[8] in 2018 he was awarded an ERC Starting Grant,^[9] and in 2019 the Dannie Heineman Prize of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Oberwolfach Prize. In 2022, he was awarded the Clay Research Award jointly with Søren Galatius,^[10] and spoke at the ICM.^[11] In 2024 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.^[12]

Selected publications

Botvinnik, Boris; Ebert, Johannes; Randal-Williams, Oscar (14 February 2017). "Infinite loop spaces and positive scalar curvature". Inventiones Mathematicae. 209 (3). Springer Science and Business Media LLC: 749–835. arXiv:1411.7408. Bibcode:2017InMat.209..749B. doi:10.1007/s00222-017-0719-3. ISSN 0020-9910. S2CID 55349429.
Galatius, Søren; Randal-Williams, Oscar (2014). "Stable moduli spaces of high-dimensional manifolds". Acta Mathematica. 212 (2). International Press of Boston: 257–377. arXiv:1201.3527. doi:10.1007/s11511-014-0112-7. ISSN 0001-5962. S2CID 119170153.
Galatius, Søren; Randal-Williams, Oscar (1 July 2017). "Homological stability for moduli spaces of high dimensional manifolds. II". Annals of Mathematics. 186 (1). arXiv:1601.00232. doi:10.4007/annals.2017.186.1.4. ISSN 0003-486X.

References

^ "Oscar Randal-Williams".
^ Oscar Randal-Williams at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
^ "Short CV: Oscar Randal-Williams" (PDF). Retrieved 11 April 2024.
^ Cambridge University Reporter, Vol. CLIV:6, No 6716, 1 November 2023, p. 95
^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: ICM2014 VideoSeries IL6.4 : Soren Galatius on Aug15Fri. YouTube.
^ "LMS Prizes 2017 | London Mathematical Society".
^ "Philip Leverhulme Prizes 2017 | the Leverhulme Trust".
^ "Oscar Randal-Williams – understanding moduli spaces | Features: Faculty Insights".
^ "Erc Funded Projects".
^ "2022 Clay Research Award | Clay Mathematics Institute". www.claymath.org.
^ Oscar Randal-Williams: Diffeomorphisms of discs
^ "Professor Oscar Randal-Williams FRS". Royal Society. Retrieved 20 May 2024.