Antonio Montalbán, assistant professor in mathematics, is among 17 researchers selected nationally to receive a 2010 David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship for Science and Engineering. Montalb'an will receive an unrestricted grant of $875,000 over five years as a Packard fellow.
Montalbán will use the grant to support his research in mathematical logic and computability theory. Driving his research are questions about the complexity of mathematical practice and the best possible methods for measuring this complexity.
"In mathematics some things are more difficult than others, as we all know. Logicians have developed many ways of giving precise meaning to the notion of being more difficult or complex," Montalbán said. "Remarkably, in a certain context it appears that a majority of constructions we do in mathematics belong to one out of five different complexity levels.
"Why there are so few levels and why there are practically no constructions more difficult than the fifth level remain unclear. Understanding why this happens is the guiding question for this project."
Last year Montalbán received an American Mathematical Society centennial fellowship, and a $291,000 National Science Foundation grant to support his research.
—Prof. Jacqueline Stewart
