Asia Pacific Mathematics Newsletter2018 King Faisal International PrizeAwarded to John Macleod Ball
Sameen Ahmed Khan

The King Faisal Foundation in Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia has awarded the 2018 KingFaisal International Prize (KFIP) for
Science to Sir John Macleod Ball of theUK for his fundamental contributions tononlinear partial differential equations, thecalculus of variations, and applications tomaterials science and liquid crystals. The
prize consists of a certificate, hand-written
in Diwani calligraphy, summarising thelaureate’s work; a commemorative 24 carat,
200 gram gold medal, uniquely cast for eachPrize; and a cash endowment of Saudi Riyal
750,000 (about US$200,000). The award
ceremony took place on Monday, March 26,
2018 under the auspices of the King of Saudi
Arabia [1].
John Macleod Ball was born on May 19,
1948 in Farnham, Surrey, UK. He obtained
his undergraduate degree in Mathematics
from St John’s College at the University ofCambridge in 1969. He completed his PhD
in Mechanical Engineering in 1972 at theSchool of Applied Sciences at the Universityof Sussex, Brighton under the supervision of DavidEdmunds. In 1972, he joined the Department ofMathematics, Heriot-Watt University on a SRC(Science Research Council, UK) postdoctoralfellowship. This fellowship enabled him to haveextended visits to the Lefschetz Center for Dynamical
Systems at Brown University, USA. At Brown
University, he started to work on the “existence ofsolutions to the equilibrium equations of nonlinear
elasticity”, and “infinite-dimensional dynamicalsystems”. He then received the SERC (Science andEngineering Research Council, UK) Senior Fellowshipfor the period 1980–1985. He held numerous visiting
professorships including: Laboratoire d’Analyse
Numérique, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris,

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Sir John Macleod Ball

France (1994); Tata Institute of Fundamental Research,Bangalore centre, India (2001); and Institute forAdvanced Study, Princeton, USA (2002–2003). Hewas elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
in 1980 at the age of 32, a Fellow of the Royal Society,
UK in 1989, and an Associé Etranger of the Académiedes Sciences, France in 2000.
John Ball is a leading figure in the international
mathematical community. He held numerous
positions including: Council Member of the EPSRC(Engineering and Physical Sciences ResearchCouncil, UK) during 1994–1999; President of theEdinburgh Mathematical Society during 1989–1990;
and President of the London Mathematical Society

Asia Pacific Mathematics Newsletter

during 1996–1998. He is a founding member of theInternational Centre for Mathematical Sciences,Edinburgh, UK (in 1990). He was also involved in
the establishment of the Institute for Mathematical
Sciences in Scotland (in 2005). He was the President ofthe International Mathematical Union during 2003–2006. He has served on several award committees
including: the first Abel Prize in 2002; and the Fields
Medal in 1998 and 2006; Leelavati Prize (sponsoredby Infosys) in 2010. He is also involved in the supportfor Mathematics in developing countries. Currently,
he is the Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy,
University of Oxford, UK and Director of the Oxford
Centre for Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations.
As an anecdote, we note that John Ball had speciallytravelled to St Petersburg, Russia to convince therenowned mathematician Grigori Perelman (whohad proved the Poincaré conjecture) to accept theFields Medal in 2006 [2–3]. At that time John Ball
was in his fourth and final year as the President of theInternational Mathematical Union. Perelman stuck tohis decision to decline! According to the Mathematics
Genealogy Project, John Ball’s genealogy can be traced
to Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei [4]; the same istrue for the present author! John Ball has an Erdős
Number of 3 through Bernd Kirchheim and David
Preiss [5].
John Ball’s main research areas are nonlinear partial
differential equations, calculus of variations, infinitedimensional dynamical systems and their applications
to nonlinear mechanics, and the mathematics ofliquid crystals. In 1977, John Ball introduced thenotion of polyconvexity and proved the existence ofan equilibrium state (to be understood as a minimiserof the total energy function) for hyperplastic materials
whose stored energy function is polyconvex, subjected
to conservative applied forces [6]. To date, there are
only two existence theorems in nonlinear elasticity.
The first one (dating back to the 19th century) isbased on the implicit function theorem whereas theone due to John Ball is based on the minimisation of
the total energy [7]. In 1982, John Ball investigateddiscontinuous equilibrium solutions and cavitationin non-linear elasticity by modelling the appearanceof a cavity in the interior of a solid, homogeneous,isotropic, hyperelastic body once a critical load isreached. This work using the mathematical conceptsof singular solutions, weak solutions, energyminimisers and Lyapunov functions formed thebasis of extensive studies in nucleation and growth insuch bodies [8]. He introduced novel methodologies
for analysing the long-time asymptotic behaviour ofsolutions of nonlinear partial differential equations
and the existence of corresponding global attractors.
In recent years, he has made significant contributions
to the mathematical understanding of the Landau–de Gennes theory of liquid crystals. Liquid crystals(widely used in electronic displays) are a class of soft
matter systems that exhibit properties intermediate
to solid crystals and isotropic fluids and hence arevery challenging for a mathematical analysis. PierreGilles de Gennes received the 1991 Nobel Prize inPhysics for his work related to liquid crystals [9–10].
John Ball with Apala Majumdar introduced a singularpotential, which is an alternative to the commonlyused Landau–de Gennes bulk potential [11]. John
Ball and Arghir Dani Zarnescu have worked on theorientability and energy minimisation in liquid crystal
models [12]. John Ball and Richard D James havedeveloped a theory that leads to a new understandingof the classical crystallographic theory of martensite,enabling new ways of viewing at shape memory
alloys, hysteresis in solid phase transformations,magnetostrictive materials, and more generally thepassage from microscales to macroscales in materialscience [13]. John Ball is a recipient of several
awards including the Whittaker Prize (1981), JuniorWhitehead Prize (1982), Sylvester Medal (2009), andMedal of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2006). John
Ball was the inaugural recipient of the David Crighton
Medal (2003), awarded jointly by the Institute ofMathematics and its Applications (IMA) in Essex,
UK, and the London Mathematical Society. He wasknighted in 2006. An event titled “Workshop on
Geometric Analysis, Elasticity, and PDEs, on the 60th
Birthday of John Ball” was held at Maxwell Institute,
Edinburgh, Scotland during June 23–27, 2008.
Another event titled, “Mathematics and Science: In
Honour of Sir John Ball” took place at Mathematical
Institute, Oxford, UK during May 17–19, 2018, which
attracted numerous renowned mathematicians [14].
The prizes are named after the third king of Saudi
Arabia, to recognise dedicated men and womenwhose contributions make a positive difference,
including scientists and scholars whose research
result in significant advances in specific areas thatbenefit humanity. The King Faisal Foundation eachyear awards International Prizes (KFIP) for Service
to Islam, Islamic Studies, Arabic Literature, Medicine,

December 2018, Volume 8 No 139

Asia Pacific Mathematics Newsletterand Science. The science subcategories cover a broad
scope: physics; mathematics; chemistry; and biology
by rotation cycle of four years [15–17]. Over 40years (1979–2018), there have been 258 laureatesfrom 43 nations. Out of 113 KFIP science andmedicine laureates, 20 are Nobel laureates. A totalof 57 scholars from 13 countries have been awarded
the King Faisal International Prize for Science. The
previous winners for Mathematics according toyear are — 1987: Sir Michael Francis Atiyah (USA);
1991: (Prize Withheld); 1994: Dennis Parnell Sullivan(USA); 1998: Sir Andrew John Wiles (UK); 2002: Yuri
Ivanovitch Manin (Russia) and Peter Williston Shor(USA); 2006: Mudumbai Seshachalu Narasimhan(India) and Sir Simon Kirwan Donaldson (UK); 2010:Enrico Bombieri (Italy) and Terence Chi-Shen Tao(Australia); and 2014: Gerd Faltings (Germany). Fiveof them have received the Fields Medal: Sir MichaelFrancis Atiyah (1966); Sir Simon Kirwan Donaldson(1986); Terence Chi-Shen Tao (2006); Enrico Bombieri(1974); and Gerd Faltings (1986) [17]. Two havereceived the Abel Prize: Sir Michael Francis Atiyah(2004) and Sir Andrew John Wiles (2016). Two havereceived the Wolf Prize in Mathematics: Sir Andrew
John Wiles (1979) and Dennis Parnell Sullivan (2010).
Two KFIP Laureates have received the BreakthroughPrize in Mathematics: Simon Donaldson (2014); andTerence Chi-Shen Tao (2014). Mudumbai Seshachalu
Narasimhan is the only Asian to have won the KFIP formathematics (in 2006) [18–19]. There are four womenamong the 113 KFIP science/medicine laureates(3.53%). There are 20 women among the 607 Nobel
medicine/physics/chemistry laureates (3.29%). Thereis only one woman among the 60 Fields Medallists(1.66%) and she is Maryam Mirzakhani [20–21].

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Jackson, A., International Congress of Mathematicians 2006, Not. Am. Math. Soc., 53 (11)1336–1340 (2006). http://www.ams.org/journals/notices/200611/comm-icm.pdf

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Sautoy, M. du., Burden of proof, New Scientist, 191(2566) 41–43 (26 August 2006). https://doi.
org/10.1016/S0262-4079(06)60299-6

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Mathematics Genealogy Project, http://www.
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Ball, J.M., Convexity conditions and existence
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Mech. Anal., 63 (4) 337–403 (1976). http://dx.doi.
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Ciarlet, P.G., and Mardare, C., Existence theorems
in intrinsic nonlinear elasticity, J. Math. Pures
Appl., 94 (3) 229–243 (2010). https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.matpur.2010.02.002

8.

Ball, J.M., Discontinuous equilibrium solutions
and cavitation in nonlinear elasticity, Philos. Trans.
Roy. Soc. A, 306 (1496) 577–611 (1982). http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsta.1982.0095

9.

Madhusudana, N.V., A matter of phenomenology,
Curr. Sci., 61 (8) 497–498 (25 October 1991).
http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Downloads/
article_id_061_08_0497_0498_0.pdf

10. Madhusudana, N.V., Pierre-Gilles de Gennes(1932–2007), Curr. Sci., 93 (3) 411–412 (10 August2007). http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Downloads/article_id_093_03_0411_0412_0.pdf
11. Ball, J.M., and Majumdar, A., Nematic liquid
crystals: From Maier-Saupe to a continuum
theory, Mol. Cryst. Liq. Cryst., 525 (1) 1–11 (2010).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15421401003795555

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12. Ball, J.M., and Zarnescu, A., Orientability andenergy minimization in liquid crystal models,Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal., 202 (2) 493–535 (2011).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00205-011-0421-3
13. Ball, J., and James, R., Theory for the microstructureof martensite and applications, in Proceedings ofthe International Conference on MartensiticTransformations, Wayman, C.M. and Perkins, J.
(Eds.), Monterey Institute of Advanced Studies,
Carmel, California (1993), pp. 65–76.
14. Mathematics and Science: In Honour of Sir JohnBall, 17–19 May 2018, Mathematical Institute,
Oxford, UK. https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/groups/oxpde/oxpde-events/2018-oxpde-events/
mathematics-and-science-honour-sir-john-ball
15. Khan, S.A., 2014 King Faisal International Prizefor Science and Medicine, Curr. Sci., 106 (4) 500(25 February 2014). http://www.currentscience.
ac.in/Volumes/106/04/0500.pdf
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2016: 110 (7) 1140–1141; 2015: 108 (7) 1202–1203;
2014: 106 (4) 500; 2013: 104 (5) 575.

17. Khan, S.A., 2014 King Faisal International Prize
Goes to Gerd Faltings, Asia Pac. Math. Newsl., 4(1) 26–27 (January 2014). http://www.asiapacificmathnews.com/04/preser ved-docs/0401/0026_0027.pdf
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Sameen Ahmed Khan
Department of Mathematics and Sciences,
College of Arts and Applied Sciences,
Dhofar University, Salalah, Sultanate of Oman
rohelakhan@yahoo.com
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1264-2302

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