Academy Fellow receives prestigious research award valued at $2.4m

Academy Fellow Professor Geordie Williamson FAA FRS has become the first Australian to receive the Max Planck-Humboldt Research Award, for his use of algorithms in mathematics.

Since 2018, this joint research award, endowed with €1.5 million (A$2.4 million) from the Max Planck Society and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, has recognised researchers outside Germany “who stand out for their promising future potential and innovative research project”.

Professor Williamson, who is Director of the Sydney Mathematical Research Institute, uses artificial intelligence (AI) for his fundamental work in mathematics. He is a leader in the branch of mathematics exploring higher dimensional space using linear algebra, known as representation theory.

As part of the collaboration with researchers from the University of Bonn and the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics, made possible by this award, Professor Williamson will tackle various mathematical problems with the help of artificial intelligence.

This includes investigating a problem in knot theory: the fact it is often impossible to recognise whether knotted structures are actually knotted. This leads to the question: does the knot remain intact when you pull on the ends of the cord, or does it unravel?

One aim of the project is to identify these cases in a simple way so that uninteresting cases can be quickly filtered out and the researchers can focus on the real knots.

When elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 2018 for his outstanding contributions to science, Professor Williamson became the Academy’s youngest living Fellow.

At the time of his election, Professor Williamson said he had been invited to work at the Max Planck Institute in Bonn and the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton in New Jersey—but preferred to stay in Australia to work.

The award will be presented on 3 December in Berlin.

An earlier iteration of this award was received by Academy Fellows Professor Bruce Kemp in 2000 and Professor Colin Masters in 1991.