The Simons Foundation honors the memory and legacy of Peter Littlewood, a physicist, scientific leader and long-serving member of the foundation’s board of trustees. Littlewood, 71, died on June 15, 2026, at his home in Chicago.
One of the largest shifts in the history of mathematics is happening right now, and a new book from Quanta Books chronicles the people and project responsible. At the heart of this revolution is Lean, a programming language and proof assistant that serves as a “truth machine,” guaranteeing that a given proof is 100 percent correct.
Pioneering evolutionary biologist Danielle “Hopi” Hoekstra has joined the Simons Foundation’s board of trustees. As a board member, she will provide strategic vision, oversight and stewardship to the foundation in support of its mission to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences.
Schmidt Sciences has named Flatiron Institute Senior Research Scientist Shirley Ho as one of its seven AI2050 Senior Fellows. The prestigious fellowships support scholars pursuing projects that could “help AI create immense benefits for humanity by 2050.” Ho and the other fellows will receive funding for three years.
The American Physical Society (APS) has awarded the Richard L. Greene Dissertation Award in Experimental Condensed Matter or Materials Physics to Thomas Werkmeister. The prize recognizes doctoral thesis research of exceptional quality and importance in experimental condensed matter or experimental materials physics.
The annual award recognizes outstanding elementary particle physics research performed by a physicist who recently obtained their Ph.D.
Nobel Prize–winning physicist Chen-Ning Yang died on October 18 in Beijing. He made multiple contributions to the fields of gauge theory, particle physics, condensed matter physics, statistical mechanics and integrable systems.
The French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) has awarded mathematician Stéphane Mallat the 2025 CNRS Gold Medal for his “exceptional contributions to the dynamism and influence of French research.” The award announcement highlights Mallat’s influential research on wavelets and the impact of his contributions to the fields of signal processing and artificial intelligence.
The Simons Foundation is pleased to announce the first recipients of its Scientific Software Research Faculty Fellowships. These fellowships will support new software-focused professor positions at academic institutions. In these roles, the fellows will develop scientific and mathematical software that will play a crucial role in enabling discoveries through data analysis, simulations, visualizations and calculations.
Under the leadership of Stanford University’s Surya Ganguli, the collaboration will study the fundamental scientific principles underlying artificial intelligence.