The American mathematician Elias Stein was one of the leading figures in harmonic analysis. A remarkable teacher and tireless researcher until the final days of his life, he was also the doctoral advisor to Charles Fefferman (1978 Fields Medal) and Terence Tao (2006 Fields Medal).
The number theorist Henry Peter Francis Swinnerton-Dyer came to prominence in the 1960s as one of the first mathematicians to harness the power of computers, then still in their infancy. His experiments on elliptic curves and the special values of certain L-functions led him and Bryan Birch (born 1931) to formulate the conjecture that now bears their names and for which the Clay Mathematics Institute has offered a prize of one million dollars.
The British mathematician Michael Atiyah received the Fields Medal in 1966 for his research in geometry and topology, and the Abel Prize in 2004 with Isadore Singer (born 1924) for their celebrated index theorem, which establishes a profound and unexpected link between mathematics and theoretical physics. Atiyah served as president of the Royal Society from 1990 to 1995, then of the Pugwash movement from 1997 to 2002, which seeks to reduce the dangers of armed conflict and find ways to counter threats to global security.
