The 1996 CRM-Fields Prize awarded to George A. Elliott

The CRM-Fields Institute Prize for 1996 was awarded to Professor George A. Elliott of the University of Toronto and the University of Copenhagen. The awards ceremony took place at the CRM on April 19, 1996, following a lecture by Professor Elliot entitled “C*-algebras at the CRM.” He was cited in particular for his classification of C*-algebras via invariants related to ordered K-theory. His work has so influenced this field that specialists speak of “the Elliot Program,” and he was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1994.

Professor Elliott has published more than 100 papers and given invited talks at some 48 universities and numerous meetings. He served as editor of the Canadian Journal of Mathematics and the Canadian Mathematical Bulletin and currently edits the Mathematical Reports of the Academy of Sciences of Canada.

In addition to the work cited above George Elliott has made important contributions in other areas of operator algebras: derivations and automorphisms of C*-algebras, classification of AF-algebras in terms of their ordered Ko-groups, and non-commutative tori.

George Elliott obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. at Queens University in Kingston in 1965 and 1966 and his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto in 1969. After postdoctoral fellowships at the University of British Columbia and Queens University and a year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, he accepted the position of lektor at the University of Copenhagen in 1972. In 1984 he was named adjunct professor at the University of Toronto.