Previous Fora / 2013
PALIS, Jacob
President, Brazilian Academy of Sciences
Jacob Palis has been working at the National Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics since 1968, after obtaining his PhD in Mathematics at University of California, Berkeley, in 1967. Before he was a student at University of Brazil, presently Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, where he graduated at the Engineering School in 1962 and was awarded the best graduated student of the University of Brazil that year.
He has been awarded national and international prizes such as Premio Moinho Santista, 1976, TWAS (Academy of Science for the Developing World) Prize in Mathematics, 1988, Brazilian National Prize in Science and Technology, 1990, Inter American Prize for Science, 1995, Mexico Prize for Science and Technology, 2001, Trieste Science Prize, 2006, International Prize Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 2008, and Balzan Prize in Mathematics, 2010.
Among the distinctions he has received, there is the Grand-Croix Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit, 1994 and the French Chevalier de la Legion d Honneur, 2005, as well as honorary doctorates from several universities, both from Brazil and abroad.
He is a member of fourteen Academies of Sciences: Brazilian (1970), TWAS (1991), Indian (1996), Chilean (1997), Mexican (2000), US National (2001), French (2002), European (2004), Norwegian (2005), Russian (2006), Indian National (2008), Leopoldina (2010), Nazionale dei Lincei (2010) and Lisbon (2011).
Presently, he is President of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and TWAS.
Palis works in the global theory in dynamical systems and recently formulated a research programme aiming at the description of the typical trajectory of a typical dynamical system. If proved to be correct, it may have important implications concerning uncertainty of future predictions of dynamical models for natural phenomena and perhaps otherwise. The programme has spurred much research.