Wendelin Werner, Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics in the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics (DPMMS), has been awarded the 2026 Sylvester Medal by the Royal Society.
First given in 1901, the prestigious medal is awarded annually for outstanding contributions to the field of mathematics. The very first Sylvester Medal went to Henri Poincaré, with subsequent recipients including Georg Cantor and Bertrand Russell. More recent winners include Werner's DPMMS colleague Professor Sir Timothy Gowers.
Wendelin Werner works in the area of probability theory, including random structures and questions which can also be related to physics. He has been awarded the Medal 'for playing an instrumental role in the development of the Schramm-Loewner evolution, a random curve which describes the scaling limit of many models from statistical mechanics in two dimensions'.
Exploring random shapes
The Sylvester Medal is the latest in a succession of awards recognising Werner's groundbreaking work. This year also marks the 20th anniversary of his Fields Medal – one of the highest honours in maths – in 2006.
The Fields Medal celebrated his contributions to the development of what was then referred to as stochastic Loewner evolution, the geometry of two-dimensional Brownian motion, and conformal field theory. The citation described this as 'one of the most exciting and fruitful interactions between mathematics and physics in recent times'.
Find out more about some of Wendelin Werner's recent work in this area in this feature article on our outreach platform Plus (plus.maths.org). Based on an interview with Werner, the article explores his work on intriguingly-named objects called Brownian loop soups – random structures which are incredibly natural from a pure mathematical point of view, but also exhibit deep links to mathematical physics.
Photo of Professor Wendelin Werner: image credit Antoine Taveneaux