Congratulations to John Ball, Bryan Birch, Marcus Du Sautoy, Roger Heath-Brown, Nigel Hitchin, Frances Kirwan, Ulrike Tillmann and Nick Trefethen, all of whom have been elected to the inaugural class of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society.

Sergey Nadtochiy, member of the Mathematical and Computational Finance Group and Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Oxford-Man Institute has been awarded the 2012 SIAM Activity Group on Financial Mathematics and Engineering Junior Scientist Prize in recognition of his "impressive contributions to Mathematical Finance and original, sophisticated and rigorous mathematical analysis of challenging problems in volatility modelling and derivative pricing theory".

See also http://www.oxford-man.ox.ac.uk/news/sergey-nadtochiy-wins-2012-siag-fme-junior-scientist-prize

Congratulations to Dan Segal, who has been awarded the LMS Polya Prize for his major contributions to group theory, and to Sarah Waters, who has been awarded a Whitehead Prize for her contributions to physiological fluid mechanics and the biomechanics of artificially engineered tissues.

St Hugh's undergraduate Stephanie Crampin has been awarded a national prize, the British Society for the History of Mathematics undergraduate essay prize. Stephanie took paper O1 (History of Mathematics) as one of her options this year.

The BSHM announcement follows:

"The BSHM is pleased to announce the inaugural winners of its undergraduate essay prize as Stephanie Crampin for an essay entitled The contribution of Évariste Galois to the founding of group theory and Nicole Johannesen for The application of mathematical understanding in the ancient Olympic Games. Stephanie is a third year student studying mathematics and philosophy at St Hugh's College, Oxford and Nicole a third year student studying mathematics at St Andrews University.

Though on very different topics the judging panel felt that amongst the submissions received, these two could not be separated in terms of overall standard and hence concluded two prizes should be awarded this year.

The Society was pleased with the range and quality of all the submissions it received this year with BSHM President, Professor Robin Wilson, stating 'I am very pleased that, in this the inaugural year of the undergraduate essay prize, the standard has been so high. This indicates not only the excellent standards of teaching of the history of mathematics in many universities across the UK, but also the creativity and enthusiasm of our undergraduates. We look forward to seeing another set of excellent submissions for the 2012-13 prize.'"