Kollar receives American Mathematical Society prize

Janos Kollar, professor of mathematics, has been awarded the 2006 Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Algebra by the American Mathematical Society.

Presented every three years, the Cole Prize is one of the highest distinctions in mathematics. Kollar, who specializes in algebraic geometry, is being honored "for his outstanding achievements in the theory of rationally connected varieties and for his illuminating work on a conjecture of Nash," according to the society.

Kollar was on the faculty of the University of Utah before joining the Princeton faculty in 1999. He was elected to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1995 and to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2005.