February 4, 2013 - David Mumford, emeritus member of ICERM's Board of Trustees, was recently awarded the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Basic Sciences category. The award was granted jointly to both Mumford and mathematician Ingrid Daubechies "for their works in pure mathematics, which have strongly influenced diverse fields of application ranging from data compression to pattern recognition," in the words of the jury's citation.

Mumford, who declared himself "pleased and surprised" by the jury's decision, explained that he was drawn to pure mathematics by a teacher who "made the field of algebraic geometry seem almost magical." His own work, which he describes as "making maps" that offer "a bird's eye view" of algebraic geometry, was impressive enough to earn him the Fields Medal in 1974, aged just 37. More details can be found at the BBVA site.