AWARDEE OF MATHEMATICS AND MECHANICS PRIZE

MA ZHIMING

Abstract

Ma Zhiming, mathematician, born on January  25, 1948, in Sichuan Province, China. He graduated from Chongqing Normal University in 1978, obtained his Ph.D. degree from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 1984. He is now a Professor and the Director of the Institute of Applied Mathematics of CAS, the President of the Chinese Mathematical Society, an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the third World Academy of Sciences.
Ma Zhiming has made important contributions in the theory of Dirichlet forms and Markov processes. He joint with his co-authors found a new framework of quasiregular Dirichlet forms which correspond to right processes in one-to-one manner. This result completes a twenty years old problem in the area. The framework of quasiregular Dirichlet forms has been used e.g. in the study of infinite dimensional analysis, quantum field theory, the theory of Markov processes, and others. Their book “An Introduction to the Theory of (Nonsymmetric) Dirichlet Forms" has been reviewed as “the second major book in the direction of connecting Dirichlet forms with Markov processes" and has been frequently referred (SCI search 120 citations in 1995-1998).
In Malliavin calculus Ma Zhiming with his co-authors proved that the capacities of Wiener spaces are invariant under the change of Gross measurable norms. This result settled the problem concerned by Prof. P. Malliavin and Prof. K. Ito respectively. It is of basic for the invariance of Malliavin Calculus.
He joint with Gong Fuzhou obtained a log-Sobolev inequality on loop space over a compact Riemannian manifold, with a neat and explicit potential depending only on the curvature of the manifold and the Hessian of the heat kernel. This result is up to date the best result in this research subjection.
He has obtained also other important results concerning the Schrdiner equation , Feynman-Kac semi-groups, Charatheodory-Finsler manifolds, Nowhere Radon smooth measures and others.
He has delivered more than 20 invited lectures at academic international conferences, and given more than 50 invited lectures at various Universities and institutions. In 1994 Ma Zhiming was invited to give a 45-minute lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians. He was awarded Max-Plank Research Award, Chern Ching-Shen Mathematics Prize, natural Sciences Prize of Academia Sinica (first class), National Natural Sciences Prize of China (second class), and Qiu-Shi Outstanding Yong Scholar Prize.