George Pólya Prize

This article is about the Pólya Prize awarded by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. For the prize awarded by the London Mathematical Society, see Pólya Prize (LMS).

The Pólya Prize is a prize in mathematics, awarded by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. First given in 1969, the prize is named after Hungarian mathematician George Pólya. It is now awarded in evenly numbered years.

The George Pólya Prize is given every two years, alternately in two categories: (1) for a notable application of combinatorial theory; (2) for a notable contribution in another area of interest to George Pólya such as approximation theory, complex analysis, number theory, orthogonal polynomials, probability theory, or mathematical discovery and learning.

The prize is broadly intended to recognize specific recent work. Prize committees may occasionally consider an award for cumulative work, but such awards should be rare.

• 1971 Ronald L. Graham, K. Leeb, B. L. Rothschild, A. W. Hales, and R. I. Jewett
• 1975 Richard P. Stanley, Endre Szemerédi, and Richard M. Wilson
• 1979 László Lovász
• 1983 Anders Björner and Paul Seymour
• 1987 A. C. Yao
• 1992 Gil Kalai and Saharon Shelah
• 1994 Gregory Chudnovsky and Harry Kesten
• 1996 Jeffry Ned Kahn and David Reimer
• 1998 Percy Deift, Xin Zhou, and Peter Sarnak
• 2000 Noga Alon
• 2002 Craig A. Tracy and Harold Widom
• 2004 Neil Robertson and Paul Seymour
• 2006 Gregory F. Lawler, Oded Schramm, Wendelin Werner
• 2008 Van H. Vu

• SIAM: George Pólya Prize
• www.siam.org