Akshay Venkatesh Among Six IAS Scholars Recognized by LMS
Akshay Venkatesh, Robert and Luisa Fernholz Professor in the School of Mathematics, is one of three IAS scholars to be named an honorary member of the London Mathematical Society (LMS) for 2026. The new members were elected at the LMS Summer General Meeting on July 3.
According to the Society, honorary membership recognizes "outstanding mathematicians who are based outside the U.K. and whose work has made a lasting contribution to the subject, as well as to the wider mathematical community." Described as "a world leader in the Langlands programme, arithmetic geometry, and number theory," Venkatesh was further lauded in the LMS citation as "a universal mathematician distinguished by a unique combination of technical expertise and theoretical vision."
Venkatesh's citation continues: "He is especially distinguished for analytic and geometric technical expertise embedded in a firm theoretical command of the abstract and the concrete, all of which come together in a far-reaching vision that impacts a wide landscape of mathematics, including number theory, topology, and even quantum field theory. In a world of increasing specialization, Venkatesh has been acclaimed by many as one of the few genuine universalists who carry out original research in an astounding array of areas and contribute to important breakthroughs in all of them."
Named alongside Venkatesh were two other mathematicians with IAS affiliations: Ruth Charney, Member (1986–87, 1992–3) in the School of Mathematics, now based at Brandeis University, and Catharina Stroppel, Member (2007–08) in the School, who currently serves as a professor at the University of Bonn and the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics in Germany. Charney, "a pre-eminent figure in geometric group theory," was praised by the LMS for her "extremely influential" research, which stretches "across a wide range of mathematics." Stroppel, who was described as "an internationally renowned mathematician" was cited for her "pioneering work" that has "transformed the field of representation theory."
The LMS Summer General Meeting also saw the formal announcement of the winners of the 2026 LMS Prizes. Three IAS scholars from the School of Mathematics were named among the recipients, including Member Trevor Wooley, who will receive the Senior Berwick Prize for a 2019 paper that has had "a huge impact on Diophantine problems." Diophantine problems are those for which only integer solutions—and sometimes natural, whole, or rational numbers—are of interest. The concept is named after the ancient Greek mathematician Diophantus, whose famous treatise Arithmetic explored many mathematical riddles and equations.
The list of winners also includes Costante Belletini, Member (2011–14, 2019), who will be presented with a Whitehead Prize "for his fundamental contributions to geometric analysis" and Member (2017) Dhruv Ranganathan, who also received a Whitehead Prize for his "groundbreaking work in logarithmic algebraic geometry, unifying algebraic, tropical and moduli theories." All winners will be officially presented with their awards at the LMS Annual General Meeting on November 20, 2026.
Read more about the 2026 LMS Awards and the Society's 2026 honorary members on the London Mathematical Society website.
