This year, 2010, the Royal Irish Academy again presented awards to students of Mathematics in nine of the Higher Education Institutions in Ireland. The recipients of the Hamilton Award in Mathematics received a scroll and €1000 cheque, generously sponsored by Invest Northern Ireland. This event formed part of Hamilton Day activities at the RIA which celebrate Hamilton’s life and contribution to mathematics and usually take place on or around October 16th, the anniversary of the day Hamilton scratched his fundamental formula for quaternion multiplication on Broome Bridge in Dublin.

 

Hamilton Prize Winners 2010

 Back Row L-R :Ruadhai Dervan, James Blair, Ciaran Hughes, Gillian Kissane, Gerard Moran Front Row L-R: Michael Cardiff, Siobhan Mc Donnell, Nicholas Canny, Jenny Young, Robert Merton, Linda Mawhinney, Mark Ross-Lonergan
 

The Awards

 Nine prizes were awarded this year. Each mathematics department (TCD, UCD, UCC, NUIG, NUIM, UL, DIT, DCU, QUB) were invited to nominate its "best" student in the penultimate year of undergraduate mathematical studies. It is not envisaged that the award within each HEI be restricted to "single honours" students of Mathematics, or indeed that any special competition be devised. The selection of the best student was based either on the results of the annual assessment of the year’s performance or on the best performance in the ordinary institution examinations in Mathematics at the end of the penultimate year. However, it is left to the discretion of the Department of Mathematics in each of the institutions to decide on the most appropriate method of selecting which student should be awarded the prize in each case.
Each Department publicised the award, and announced the criteria used to determine the prize-winner within each institution. The Academy held an awards ceremony in Academy House on Friday, October 15th 2010, the day before the anniversary of Hamilton's famous walk. All nine prize-winners, who should then be in their final year of study, attended this ceremony.

 

 

The Academy was in a position, thanks to the sponsorship of Invest Northern Ireland, to fund the visit of an eminent mathematician from abroad to participate in our Hamilton Day activities. Professor Robert Merton, MIT Sloan School of Management delivered a public lecture in the Burke Theatre, Trinity College Dublin on Friday 15 October at 7pm

Download Professor Merton’s presentation here

 

Observations on Mathematical Finance in the Practice of Finance

Abstract:

For several decades, financial innovation has been a central force driving the global financial system toward greater efficiency with considerable economic benefit having accrued from those changes. The scientific breakthroughs in finance in this period both shaped, and were shaped by, the extraordinary innovations in finance practice that expanded opportunities for risk sharing, lowering transaction costs and reducing information and agency costs. Today no major financial institution in the world, including central banks, can function without the computer-based mathematical models of modern financial science and the myriad of derivative contracts and markets used to extract price- and risk-discovery information as well as execute risk-transfer transactions. But, today we are also feeling the effects of a global financial crisis of a magnitude and scope not seen in nearly eighty years, which some attribute to the changes in the financial system brought about by financial innovation, derivatives and mathematical models. The lecture will apply mathematical models to analyze and offer observations on the dynamics of credit-risk propagation and other structural elements of the financial crisis. Looking beyond the crisis, it then explores the essential role of financial innovation and mathematical finance in addressing the financial challenges and opportunities of the impending future.
 

 

Robert C. Merton is the School of Management Distinguished Professor of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He was the George Fisher Baker Professor of Business Administration (1988-98) and the John and Natty McArthur University Professor (1998-2010) at the Harvard Business School, where he is now Emeritus. He previously served on the finance faculty of the Sloan School from 1970 until 1988. Professor Merton received the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1997 for a new method to determine the value of derivatives.