| RefNo | EC/2018/48 |
| Level | Item |
| Title | Williamson, Geordie: certificate of election to the Royal Society |
| Date | 9 May 2018 |
| Description | Certificate endorsing election of Geordie Wiliamson as a Fellow of the Royal Society, including personal details of the elected Fellow and citing the reasons for election and names of proposers. Signed off by the Executive Director of the Royal Society, Julie Maxton. |
| Citation | Geordie Williamson is nominated for his groundbreaking work in representation theory and related fields, and in particular for two major breakthroughs. First is his proof, with Ben Elias, of Soergel's conjecture on bimodules associated to Coxeter groups. This established the combinatorial result that the coefficients of the Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials are non-negative, as well as yielding a new proof of Kazhdan and Lusztig's conjectured character formula for representations of complex semi-simple Lie algebras. Second is the construction (building on earlier work with Ben Elias and Xuhua He) of counterexamples to the expected bounds in Lusztig's conjectured character formula for rational representations of algebraic groups in positive characteristics that grow exponentially with the rank of the group. Williamson's work has been recognised at the very highest level - well above what one would expect for a typical FRS. He has received a Clay Research Award, is a plenary speaker at ICM 2018, and he will be the distinguished professor in residence at the IAS in Princeton in 2020-21. |
| Extent | 4p |
| Format | Computer printout |
| PhysicalDescription | A4 papers |
| AccessStatus | Closed |
| AccessConditions | Election certificates are subject to 50 year closure period from date of election. Details of proposers are kept confidential until the 50 year closure period has elapsed. |