The Leroy P. Steele Prizes are awarded every year since 1970 by the American Mathematical Society for distinguished research work and writing in the field of mathematics. Since 1993, the awards have been split into three categories: lifetime achievement, mathematical exposition, and research.
The prizes were begun from a bequest of Leroy P. Steele and were set up in honor of George David Birkhoff, William Fogg Osgood and William Caspar Graustein. The way the prizes are awarded was changed in 1976 and 1993, but the initial aim of honoring expository writing as well as research has been retained. The prizes—$10,000 for lifetime achievement, and $5,000 for mathematical exposition and for research—are not given on a strict national basis, but relate to writing in English (originally, or in translation) and mathematical activity in the United States.
Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement 2026 H. Blaine Lawson 2025 Dusa McDuff 2024 Haïm Brezis 2023 Nicholas M. Katz 2022 Richard P. Stanley 2021 Spencer Bloch 2020 Karen Uhlenbeck 2019 Jeff Cheeger 2018 Jean Bourgain 2017 James G. Arthur 2016 Barry Simon 2015 Victor Kac 2014 Phillip A. Griffiths 2013 Yakov G. Sinai 2012 Ivo M. Babuška 2011 John W. Milnor 2010 William Fulton 2009 Luis Caffarelli 2008 George Lusztig 2007 Henry P. McKean 2006 Frederick W. Gehring, Dennis P. Sullivan 2005 Israel M. Gelfand 2004 Cathleen Synge Morawetz 2003 Ronald Graham, Victor Guillemin 2002 Michael Artin, Elias Stein 2001 Harry Kesten 2000 Isadore M. Singer 1999 Richard V. Kadison 1998 Nathan Jacobson 1997 Ralph S. Phillips 1996 Goro Shimura 1995 John T. Tate 1994 Louis Nirenberg 1993 Eugene B. Dynkin
Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition Year Prizewinner Citation 2026 Michael E. Taylor for his fundamental treatise "Partial Differential Equations, Volumes I-III," published in 1996 as volumes 115-117 of Springer Verlag's Applied Mathematical Sciences series.Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition 2026 2025 James S. Milne for his extensive corpus of excellent expository works provided on his website. 2024 Benson Farb and Dan Margalit for their book A Primer on Mapping Class Groups. 2023 Lawrence C. Evans for his book Partial Differential Equations. 2022 Aise Johan de Jong for being the originator and maintainer of the Stacks Project. 2021 Noga Alon and Joel H. Spencer for their book The Probabilistic Method.2020 Martin R. Bridson and André Haefliger for their book Metric Spaces of Non-Positive Curvature.2019 Philippe Flajolet (posthumously) and Robert Sedgewick for their book Analytic Combinatorics, an authoritative and highly accessible compendium of its subject, which demonstrates the deep interface between combinatorial mathematics and classical analysis.2018 Martin Aigner and Günter M. Ziegler for their book Proofs from THE BOOK.2017 Dusa McDuff and Dietmar Salamon for their book J-holomorphic Curves and Symplectic Topology.2016 David A. Cox, John Little and Donal O'Shea for their book Ideals, Varieties, and Algorithms, which has made algebraic geometry and computational commutative algebra accessible not just to mathematicians but to students and researchers in many fields. 2015 Robert Lazarsfeld for his books Positivity in Algebraic Geometry I and II, published in 2004. These books were instant classics that have profoundly influenced and shaped research in algebraic geometry over the past decade. 2014 Yuri Burago, Dmitri Burago, Sergei Ivanov for their book A Course in Metric Geometry, in recognition of excellence in exposition and promotion of fruitful ideas in geometry. 2013 John Guckenheimer, Philip Holmes in recognition of their book Nonlinear Oscillations, Dynamical Systems, and Bifurcations of Vector Fields. 2012 Michael Aschbacher, Richard Lyons, Stephen D. Smith, Ronald Solomon for their work The Classification of Finite Simple Groups: Groups of Characteristic 2 Type. 2011 Henryk Iwaniec for his long record of excellent exposition, both in books and in classroom notes. 2010 David Eisenbud for his book Commutative Algebra with a View Toward Algebraic Geometry. 2009 I. G. Macdonald for his book Symmetric Functions and Hall Polynomials. 2008 Neil Trudinger for his book Elliptic Partial Differential Equations of Second Order, written with the late David Gilbarg. 2007 David Mumford for his beautiful expository accounts of a host of aspects of algebraic geometry, including The Red Book of Varieties and Schemes. 2006 Lars Hörmander for his book The Analysis of Linear Partial Differential Operators. 2005 Branko Grünbaum for his book Convex Polytopes. 2004 John Milnor in recognition of a lifetime of expository contributions ranging across a wide spectrum of disciplines including topology, symmetric bilinear forms, characteristic classes, Morse theory, game theory, algebraic K-theory, iterated rational maps... and the list goes on. 2003 John B. Garnett for his book Bounded Analytic Functions. 2002 Yitzhak Katznelson for his book An Introduction to Harmonic Analysis. 2001 Richard Stanley in recognition of the completion of his two-volume work Enumerative Combinatorics. 2000 John H. Conway in recognition of his many expository contributions in automata, the theory of games, lattices, coding theory, group theory, and quadratic forms. 1999 Serge Lang for his many mathematics books. Among Lang's most famous texts are Algebra and Algebraic Number Theory. 1998 Joseph H. Silverman for his books The Arithmetic of Elliptic Curves and Advanced Topics in the Arithmetic of Elliptic Curves. 1997 Anthony W. Knapp for his book Representation Theory of Semisimple Groups, a beautifully written book which starts from scratch but takes the reader far into a highly developed subject. 1996 Bruce Berndt for the four volumes, Ramanujan's Notebooks, parts I, II, III, and IV. 1996 William Fulton for his book Intersection Theory. 1995 Jean-Pierre Serre for his 1970 book Cours d'Arithmétique, with its English translation, published in 1973 by Springer Verlag, A Course in Arithmetic. 1994 Ingrid Daubechies for her book Ten Lectures on Wavelets. 1993 Walter Rudin for his books Principles of Mathematical Analysis and Real and Complex Analysis.
Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research