Geoffrey Grimmett

Geoffrey Grimmett
Born Geoffrey Richard Grimmett
20 December 1950[1]
Birmingham
Nationality British
Fields
Institutions
Alma mater
Thesis Random Fields and Random Graphs (1974)
Doctoral advisor
Doctoral students
  • Jakob Björnberg
  • Benjamin Graham
  • Philipp Hiemer
  • Alexander Holroyd
  • Ioan Manolescu
  • David Sheridan
  • Stephen Suen[4]
Notable awards
Spouse Rosine Bonay[1][6]
Children Hugo Grimmett[6]
Website
www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~grg

Geoffrey Richard Grimmett FRS (born 20 December 1950)[1] is a mathematician known for his work on the mathematics of random systems arising in probability theory[7][8] and statistical mechanics, especially percolation theory[9] and the contact process.[10][2] He is the Professor of Mathematical Statistics in the Statistical Laboratory, University of Cambridge, and the Master of Downing College, Cambridge.[11][12]

Career

Grimmett was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham and Merton College, Oxford. He graduated in 1971, and completed his DPhil in 1974[13] under the supervision of John Hammersley and Dominic Welsh.[4] He was the IBM Research Fellow at New College, Oxford from 1974–1976 before moving to the University of Bristol.[1][14] He was appointed Professor of Mathematical Statistics at the University of Cambridge in 1992, becoming a fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge.[15] He was Director of the Statistical Laboratory from 1994–2000, Head of the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics from 2002–2007, and is a trustee of the Rollo Davidson Prize.[16]

Grimmett was awarded the Rollo Davidson Prize in 1989. He was the managing editor of the journal [17] from 2000–2005, and was appointed managing editor of [18] in 2009.

He competed at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal as a member of the Great Britain Men's Foil Team, finishing 6th.[19]

In October 2013 he was installed as Master of Downing College, Cambridge in succession to Professor Barry Everitt.[6]

Awards and honours

In May 2014 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.[5] His nomination reads:

“ At a time of flowering of probabilistic methods in all branches of mathematics, Geoffrey Grimmett is one of the broadest probabilists of his generation, and unquestionably a leading figure in the subject on the world scene. He is particularly recognised for his achievements in the rigorous theory of disordered physical systems. Especially influential is his work on and around percolation theory, the contact model for stochastic spatial epidemics, and the random-cluster model, a class that includes the Ising/Potts models of ferromagnetism. His monograph on percolation is a standard work in a core area of probability, and is widely cited. His breadth within probability is emphasized by his important contributions to probabilistic combinatorics and probabilistic number theory.[5] ”

Personal

Geoffrey Grimmett is the son of Benjamin J Grimmett and Patrica W (Lewis) Grimmett.[20]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 "GRIMMETT, Prof. Geoffrey Richard". Who's Who 2014, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 2014; online edn, Oxford University Press.(subscription required)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Geoffrey Grimmett's publications indexed by Google Scholar, a free service provided by Google
  3. ↑ Grimmett, G. R.; McDiarmid, C. J. H. (2008). "On colouring random graphs". Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 77 (2): 313. doi:10.1017/S0305004100051124.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Geoffrey Grimmett at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 "Professor Geoffrey Grimmett FRS". The Royal Society. 2014-05-01. Retrieved 2014-05-01.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Professor Geoffrey Grimmett elected as next Master
  7. ↑ Grimmett, G. R.; Stirzaker, D. R. (2001). Probability and Random Processes. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198572220.
  8. ↑ Grimmett, G. R. (2010). Probability on Graphs. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521147352.
  9. ↑ Grimmett, G. (1999). "What is Percolation?". Percolation. p. 1. doi:10.1007/978-3-662-03981-6_1. ISBN 978-3-642-08442-3.
  10. ↑ "Geoffrey Grimmett's homepage at the University of Cambridge".
  11. ↑ Geoffrey Grimmett's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database, a service provided by Elsevier.
  12. ↑ List of publications from Microsoft Academic Search
  13. ↑ Grimmett, Geoffrey (1974). Random Fields and Random Graphs (DPhil thesis). University of Oxford.
  14. ↑ Frieze, A. M.; Grimmett, G. R. (1985). "The shortest-path problem for graphs with random arc-lengths". Discrete Applied Mathematics 10: 57. doi:10.1016/0166-218X(85)90059-9.
  15. ↑ "Fellows of the Colleges: Churchill". Cambridge University Reporter. University of Cambridge. 2 October 2008. Retrieved 7 May 2009.
  16. ↑ "Trustees of the Rollo Davidson Trust".
  17. ↑ Probability Theory and Related Fields
  18. ↑ Probability Surveys
  19. ↑ "SR/Olympic Sports".
  20. ↑ "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved May 10, 2014.


Academic offices
Preceded by
Barry Everitt		 Master of Downing College, Cambridge
2013– 		Succeeded by
Incumbent