Jean Bourgain, who will start his appointment as a Distinguished Visiting Professor in our department in the Spring 2017,  has received the 2017 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics, for “multiple transformative contributions to analysis, combinatorics, partial differential equations, high-dimensional geometry, and number theory.”

https://breakthroughprize.org/Prizes/3
https://breakthroughprize.org/Laureates/3/L3798

Bourgain was cited by the prize committee for solving major problems in vector spaces, as well as expander graphs; proving one of the two most fundamental theorems in ergodic theory; and developing novel techniques and insights applicable across a wide range of fields. A winner of  the Fields Medal in 1994 and a host of other recognitions,  Bourgain has produced important work with impact across theoretical computer science, group expansion, all areas of analysis, and the theory of exponential sums in number theory.