Indian mathematician Nikhil Srivastava has been awarded the prestigious 2021 Michael and Sheila Held Prize along with two others, announced the National Academy of Sciences.
Srivastava from the University of California, Berkeley, Adam Marcus from the Ecole polytechnique federale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Daniel Alan Spielman from Yale University will receive the prize for solving long-standing questions on the Kadison-Singer problem and on Ramanujan graphs.
The prize consists of a medal and USD 100,000.
Srivastava, Marcus and Spielman uncovered a deep new connection between linear algebra, geometry of polynomials, and graph theory that has inspired the next generation of theoretical computer scientists, a statement from the National Academy of Sciences said.
Srivastava is currently Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of California.
The Michael and Sheila Held Prize, started in 2017, is presented annually and honours outstanding, innovative, creative, and influential research in the areas of combinatorial and discrete optimisation, or related parts of computer science, such as the design and analysis of algorithms and complexity theory.