Postdoctoral fellow awarded Stieltjes Prize for 2015

27 Jan 2017 - 15:58:28 in Achievement
A postdoctoral fellow from Victoria’s School of Mathematics and Statistics has been awarded the Stieltjes Prize for 2015, which recognises the best PhD in Mathematics in the Netherlands.

Rutger Kuyper was awarded the prize for his thesis entitled Computability, Probability and Logic, which examines the interplay between these three subfields of mathematics. His thesis consists of three parts: computability and logic, algorithmic randomness and how logical reasoning can be combined with intuitive probabilistic reasoning.

The Stieltjes Prize has been awarded annually since 1996. Thomas Stieltjes was a nineteenth century Dutch mathematician whose name is associated with a number of mathematical discoveries.

Dr Kuyper completed his PhD at the Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, under the supervision of Dr Sebastiaan Terwijn. Dr Kuyper’s thesis committee included Victoria’s Professor Rod Downey.

Dr Kuyper’s research at Victoria focuses on computability theory, with an emphasis on algorithmic randomness. He says Victoria is a great place to carry out this research, as there is a strong group of researchers working in algorithmic randomness.

Originally from Haarlem, the Netherlands, Dr Kuyper previously spent a year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He plans to spend a year in Wellington before returning to Wisconsin.