Two professors in the Department of Mathematics in the College of Arts & Sciences were recently named fellows in the American Mathematical Society.
Professor Slawomir Solecki and Associate Professor Xin Zhou were recently elected as fellows, an honor given to members who have made outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication and utilization of mathematics.
"I am honored to be selected as an AMS fellow and I hope this will popularize, in a small degree, the broader area of research I am a part of," Solecki said.
Solecki's focus is on descriptive set theory and its applications to and connections with other areas of mathematics such as geometric topology, topological dynamics, combinatorics and ergodic theory.
“Recently, I have been occupied with investigating measure preserving transformations,” Solecki said. “The study of such transformations has its roots in classical mechanics. Answering an old question, I proved that the structure of closed groups generated by generic transformations of this type is much less unform and much more complicated than had been expected.”
Zhou said he was also honored by the selection, in recognition of his research. “I will contribute, along with other AMS fellows, to promote the development and impact of mathematics in the states.”
Zhou’s research explores the closed surfaces of three-dimensional shapes. These surfaces are used for mathematical models for things such as soap films, soap bubbles, capillary surfaces and certain types of black hole boundaries.
“A noteworthy achievement in my recent research was our research showing that in any generic closed curved 3-dimensional space without holes, there are at least four closed minimal surfaces, each without any holes," he said.
Hyrum Edwards '25 is a communications assistant for the College of Arts & Sciences.
