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Jeremy Quastel, a professor in the department of mathematics in the Faculty of Arts & Science, has been awarded the inaugural by the European Mathematical Society.

The prize honours the memory of the late French mathematician Paul Lévy, who is credited with largely shaping modern probability theory. It is presented to a scientist who has made outstanding contributions to probability theory and its applications.

Quastel is a world-renowned specialist in probability theory, stochastic processes and partial differential equations. “When I started working on the KPZ equation 15 years ago, it wasn't something people really thought was possible,” Quastel said, referring to the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation, a stochastic partial differential equation that was introduced in 1986 and soon became a default model for random interface growth in physics.

“For advances in math, you need to take a real chance and see what happens. I gave it a try and I was very lucky it worked.

"Now, we have new problems to investigate: Why these integrable equations in random growth? What happens in three dimensions? More and more students are taking chances and testing their ideas in this area. I’m very excited to see what the future of this field holds.”

The Paul Lévy Prize in Probability was established by the European Mathematical Society in collaboration with École Polytechnique, the Foundation of École Polytechnique and the Paul Lévy family, with support from BNP Paribas.