Karen Uhlenbeck
Karen Keskulla Uhlenbeck ForMemRS (born August 24, 1942) is an American mathematician and one of the founders of modern geometric analysis. She is a professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin, where she held the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair. She is currently a distinguished visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and a visiting senior research scholar at Princeton University.
Karen Uhlenbeck | |
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Uhlenbeck in 1982 | |
| Born | Karen Keskulla August 24, 1942 Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. |
| Education | University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (BA) New York University Brandeis University (MA, PhD) |
| Known for | Calculus of variations Geometric analysis Minimal surfaces Yang–Mills theory |
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| Awards | MacArthur Fellowship Noether Lecturer (1988) National Medal of Science (2000) Leroy P. Steele Prize (2007) Abel Prize (2019) Leroy P. Steele Prize (2020) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | Institute for Advanced Study University of Texas, Austin University of Chicago University of Illinois, Chicago University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign |
| Thesis | The calculus of variations and global analysis (1968) |
| Doctoral advisor | Richard Palais |
Uhlenbeck was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2007. She won the 2019 Abel Prize for "her pioneering achievements in geometric partial differential equations, gauge theory, and integrable systems, and for the fundamental impact of her work on analysis, geometry and mathematical physics." She is the first, and so far only, woman to win the prize since its inception in 2003. She donated half of the prize money to organizations which promote more engagement of women in research mathematics.