Funded by SIAM, the CICIAM Pioneer Prize (now the ICIAM Pioneer Prize) is for pioneering work introducing applied mathematical methods and scientific computing techniques to an industrial problem area or a new scientific field of applications. The prize commemorates the spirit and impact of the American pioneers.
The CICIAM Pioneer Prize for 1999 was awarded to Professor Ronald R. Coifman (Yale University) and Professor Helmut Neunzert (Universität Kaiserslautern) for different kinds of significant contributions to applied mathematics.
Ronald Coifman was being honored for his pioneering work in exploiting harmonic and, especially, wavelet analysis to provide new computational methods and algorithms in a wide variety of important contexts involving signal and image processing. This research, which has been conducted over the last twenty years in collaboration with Yves Meyer of Paris, former colleagues Gregory Belykin and Vladimir Rokhlin at Yale, and other prominent mathematicians, relies on the classical theories of Calderon and Zygmund and the use of function spaces and singular integral operators. Applications have included FBI data files for fingerprints and many other problems involving compression and/or restoration of images and sound.
Professor Neunzert is being honored for his work over the last twenty years in developing the ``techno-mathematics'' both as a scientific discipline and as a curriculum, now offered in more than twenty-five universities, and for his work in developing the specifications of industrial mathematics through active consulting and modeling, in playing a leading role in the European Consortium for Mathematics in Industry, and in founding and directing the Fraunhofer Institute for Techno- and Econo-mathematics at Kaiserslautern. Many, but by far not all of his collaborations with industry were in his own scientific field of the kinetic theory of gases and the Boltzmann equation. The vigorous and expanding international activity involving the mathematical modeling of industrial problems owes much to Professor Neunzert's inspiration, energy, and example. It promises many new opportunities to use mathematics.
Subcommittee for the 1999 ICIAM/CICIAM Pioneer Prize
- Carlo Cercignani;
- Heinz Engl;
- John Hinch;
- Robert O'Malley (chair);
- Pierre-Louis Lions;
- Mikhail M. Vishik.