Carnegie Mellon's Dana Scott Awarded Russian Gold Medal for Contributions to Mathematics

May 1, 2009

The Sobolev Institute of Mathematics, which is part of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Science, has awarded a Gold Medal for "Great Contributions to Mathematics" to Dana S. Scott, the Hillman University Professor of Computer Science, Philosophy and Mathematical Logic, Emeritus, at Carnegie Mellon University.

Scott has made fundamental contributions to contemporary logic and is best known for his creation of domain theory, which is a branch of mathematics essential for analyzing advanced computer programming languages.

Also receiving a Gold Medal this year is Igor R. Shafarevich, a Russian mathematician who was a dissident under the Soviet regime.

Two medals—one to a Russian mathematician and one to a non-Russian—have been awarded annually since 2007 when the Institute, located in Novosibirsk Akademgorodok, Russia, marked its 50th anniversary. About 500 Institute researchers carry on fundamental investigations in mathematics, mathematical physics, and informatics.

Scott earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics at Berkeley and a Ph.D. in mathematics at Princeton University. He has taught at Oxford University, the University of California at Berkeley, Princeton University, Stanford University, and the universities of Chicago, Amsterdam, and Linz. A member of the National Academy of Sciences and the British Academy, Scott won the Association for Computing Machinery's A.M. Turing Award in 1976 and the Royal Swedish Academy of Science's Rolf Schock Prize in logic and philosophy in 1997.

Source: Carnegie Mellon University, April 13, 2009.