Second R. E. Moore Prize Awarded at SCAN'2004

Thomas C. Hales from the University of Pittsburgh received the 2nd biannual R. E. Moore Prize for Applications of Interval Analysis, during the 11th GAMM-IMACS International Symposium on Scientific Computing, Computer Arithmetic, and Validated Numerics SCAN'2004 (Fukuoka, Japan, October 4-8, 2004).

The R. E. Moore Prize was established in 2002 by the Editorial Board of Reliable Computing, an International Journal devoted to reliable mathematical computations based on finite representations and guaranteed accuracy.

The 2004 R. E. Moore Prize is awarded to Professor T. Hales for his solution of the Kepler conjecture about the densest arrangement of spheres in space. Dr. Hales solved this long-standing problem by using interval arithmetic. His preliminary results appeared in the Notices of the American Math Society in 2000; his full paper "The Kepler Conjecture" will appear in Annals of Mathematics, one of the world leading journals in pure mathematics. The paper and the detailed proof can be obtained from the author's webpage.

The detailed information about the R. E. Moore Prize is attached.

APPPENDIX
The R. E. Moore Prize for Applications of Interval Analysis: Description and Rationale

The idea of arithmetic over sets to encompass finiteness, roundoff error, and uncertainty dates back to the first part of the twentieth century or earlier. By the late 1950's, with exponentially increasing use of digital electronic computers for mathematical computations, interval arithmetic was a concept whose time had come. With his 1962 dissertation "Interval Arithmetic and Automatic Error Analysis in Digital Computing," encouraged by George Forsythe, Prof. Ramon Moore was one of the first to to develop the underlying principles of interval arithmetic in their modern form. Prof. Moore subsequently dedicated much of his life to furthering the subject. This includes guidance of seven Ph.D. students, interaction with other prominent figures in the area such as Eldon Hansen, Louis Rall, and Bill Walster, and publication of the seminal work "Interval Analysis" (Prentice Hall, 1966) and its update "Methods and Applications of Interval Analysis" (SIAM, 1979). In addition, Prof. Moore published a related book "Computational Functional Analysis" (Horwood, 1985), and organized the conference with proceedings Reliability in Computing (Academic Press, 1988). This latter conference was a major catalyst for renewed interest in the subject. It is safe to say that these accomplishments of Professor Moore have made interval analysis what it is today. To continue and further this tradition, in 2002, we decided to dedicate to Prof. Moore a biennial prize for the best dissertation or paper in applications of interval analysis.

Note: By "applications" we intend primarily applications in engineering and the sciences that will bring further recognition to the power of interval computations. However, we do not wish to rule out significant and widely recognized "pure" applications. The editorial board of the journal "Reliable Computing" judges this.

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