November 6, 2008
Gerberding bells to ring in honor of mathematician
On Sunday Nov. 9, UW’s Gordon Stuart Peek Foundation Memorial Change Ringing Bells in Gerberding’s tower will ring from 7:30 to 8 p.m. half-muffled in memory of Oded Schramm, a world-famous mathematician from Microsoft Research, and an Affiliate Professor in the UW Department of Mathematics.
According to information from Microsoft Research, Schramm’s work revolutionized the field of mathematical probability, and he was widely considered the most influential probabilist in the world. He transformed understanding of critical processes in the plane through his introduction of the Stochastic Loewner evolution. He also made fundamental contributions to circle packings, random spanning trees, percolation, and noise sensitivity of Boolean functions. His awards and honors include the Salem Prize, the Clay Research Award, the Loève Prize, the Poincaré Prize, the Pólya Prize, and the Ostrowski Prize; he was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
A keen mountaineer, snow-boarder and unicyclist, Schramm died in a hiking accident on Sept. 1. He is survived by his wife and two children. His colleagues describe him as “a remarkable individual: always calm, humble, generous with his insights and ideas, the best collaborator one could hope for, and the person who could always be relied upon.” For more information about Schramm, visit Microsoft Research’s memorial Web page and his Wikipedia page.
On Sunday, the bells will be rung by a trained band of eight people, including three of Schramm’s colleagues – two from Microsoft Research, and one, a former student of Schramm, from the University of British Columbia. The bells will be rung “half-muffled”, i.e., with a leather pad on one side of the clapper, making every alternate stroke sound as an echo. This solemn style of ringing is traditional for times of mourning and remembrance.
For more details about the bells, see http://www.music.washington.edu/bells/.
