The President and Council of the IMA are delighted to announce that the 2024 IMA Gold Medal has been awarded to Professor Ian David Abrahams BSc PhD DIC FIMA FRSE of the University of Cambridge, Faculty of Mathematics.
Institute Gold Medals are awarded in recognition of outstanding contributions to mathematics and its applications over a period of years, with nominations being considered every 2 years.
Professor I. David Abrahams will receive his award at the 2025 IMA Summer Lecture, which will be held at the Royal Society on the 25 June 2025 – more information on this event will be announced early in 2025.
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Professor I. David Abrahams has provided three decades of enthusiastic, inclusive and energetic leadership to the UK applied mathematics community. He has made substantial and innovative contributions across an extremely wide range of problems in applied mathematics and nurtured many important collaborations between academics and UK industry. He has consistently encouraged and mentored younger mathematicians, promoted public communication of science and widening participation, and led and developed his own Waves Group and applied mathematics generally at the University of Manchester. He has also served and supported the entire UK mathematical sciences community through his outstanding Directorships of both the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences (ICMS) in Edinburgh and the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI) in Cambridge.
The United Kingdom is a world leader in the Mathematical Sciences. As well as university departments, the culture of mathematics in the UK is supported by learned societies (including IMA and the London Mathematical Society (LMS)), national mathematics research centres: the INI and the ICMS, and major international conferences in the UK especially the British Mathematics Colloquium (BMC) and the British Applied Mathematics Colloquium (BAMC). David has made major contributions to all these bodies. He has served as President and Vice President of the IMA, modernizing and invigorating this institution as well as enthusiastically chairing and serving on many boards and committees of the IMA and LMS, especially promoting closer cooperation between applied and pure mathematics. He has been an organizer of six BAMCs as well as being instrumental in the merging of the two cultures with joint BAMC and BMC meetings.
David has served on committees of funding bodies including EPSRC, councils and boards of many international mathematics and mechanics societies, as well as numerous national and international nominating and prize committees. He was awarded the IMA/LMS David Crighton Medal for services to mathematics in 2017.
Through his energetic and dedicated leadership and participation, David has focused in particular on bringing together people from different ‘factions’ within mathematical sciences in the UK, on promotion of mathematics in the service of industry and broader society, and on inclusiveness and sharing his love of mathematics. In his roles as Director of ICMS and then INI, two of the most pivotal positions in UK mathematics, David expanded and developed mechanisms for collaboration between academic mathematicians and UK industry. At INI he was instrumental in securing additional funding to enlarge the scope and volume of its work; in particular, he employed part of this new resource, as well as providing academic steer, towards the setting up of the fledgling Academy for Mathematical Sciences and the Knowledge Exchange Hub for the Mathematical Sciences.
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, under David’s leadership the INI pivoted rapidly to running its programmes virtually and he was instrumental in forming the Virtual Forum for Knowledge Exchange in the Mathematical Sciences (V-KEMS), that received the PraxisAuril award for Knowledge Exchange in 2021. He also oversaw the creation and delivery of a virtual INI research programme on the ‘Infectious Dynamics of Pandemics’.
Davids’ appointment to national leadership roles in UK mathematics is founded, of course, on his academic track record of deep contributions to applied mathematics across a broad range of topics. He has published around 180 research papers with major contributions to acoustics, fluid/structural interactions, non-destructive evaluation, fracture mechanics, linear and nonlinear elasticity, composite materials modelling, electromagnetism, water waves, aero- and hydro-acoustics and seismology. More recently his research has diversified to include mathematical finance, nonlinear viscoelasticity, melting of glaciers and related phenomena including the entrapment of meteorites in Antarctic ice. He has developed and sustained the Waves Group at Manchester with mathematicians he mentored, who are now leaders in academia and industry in their own rights. David held the prestigious Beyer Chair in Applied Mathematics at Manchester and the N.M. Rothschild & Sons Professorship of Mathematical Sciences at Cambridge. He has been awarded a Royal Society Industry Fellowship and Wolfson Fellowship.
Given David Abrahams committed energetic and sustained leadership in UK applied mathematics it is fitting that he is the recipient of the IMA’s most prestigious award, the Gold Medal.
