By the decision of the jury, appointed by the Scientific Council of the Juliusz P. Schauder Center for Nonlinear Studies at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland, and consisting of Professors:
- Wacław Marzantowicz (chairman of the jury, Poznań),
- Marek Izydorek (Gdańsk),
- Grzegorz Karch (Wrocław),
- Roman Srzednicki (Kraków),
- Andrzej Szulkin (Stockholm),
the winner of the 2012 Schauder Medal is the distinguished Belgian mathematician professor Jean Mawhin from Université Catholique de Louvain.
The Schauder Medal is awarded to individuals for their significant achievements related to topological methods in nonlinear analysis. The awarding ceremony will take place during a special event organized by the Scahuder Center at the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Sciences on May 8, 2013.
Jean Mawhin is a mathematician of world renown being one of pioneers in the developments of topological methods and techniques in nonlinear analysis. His mathematical interests encompass different topics of the contemporary nonlinear analysis: ordinary and partial differential equations, variational methods and critical point theory and history of mathematics. His enormous scientific contribution includes approximately 350 articles and 10 books or monographs. The use of topological tools such as the famous coincidence degree, min-max theory of critical points and his attitude towards the existence and multiplicity of periodic solutions of general classes of differential problems and many others give him an important place in mathematics. Apart from being an ingenious mathematician, Jean Mawhin is a splendid lecturer and speaker, a charming and very friendly personality with a brilliant sense of humor.
Jean Mawhin was born in Belgium in 1942. He obtained his PH.D. in science (mathematics) from the Université de Liege in 1969. He was an adjoint professor at the Liege University and then a professor at the Université Catholique de Louvain from 1970 to 2008, and has been professor emeritus at that same institution since 2008. In 2001-2003 he was a vice-president and the president of the Societe Scientifique de Bruxelles. In addition to being an invited professor at many universities in Europe, US and Canada, Jean Mawhin is Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Bucharest and the Polytechnic in Bucharest, Romania, and the University of Granada in Spain. It is hard to enlist all of his honorary distinction: the Alexander von Humboldt Award, the Bernard Bolzano Honorary Medal of the Czech Academy of Science just to mention a few. Professor Mawhin is a member of Editorial Boards of many mathematical journals and the Editor-in-Chief of the Topological Methods in Nonlinear Analysis, the journal published by the Schauder Center.