The Belgian Ingrid Daubechies and the American David Mumford have just been awarded the Frontiers of Knowledge award given by the BBVA Foundation in the Basic Sciences category . The jury has awarded them this prestigious award for “their work in mathematical theory, which has had a great influence in various fields of application, from data compression to pattern recognition,” according to the minutes.
And is that the work of these two mathematicians unknown to most citizens have influenced fields as diverse as data understanding or medical imaging techniques . And all thanks to pure mathematics, applying different multidisciplinary approaches.
At a particular level, the jury has specifically recognized the professor at Duke University (United States) Ingrid Daubechies for her work on “wavelets, which have led to a new scientific approach to data compression, with great impact on many of technologies, including efficient audio and video transmission, and medical imaging . ” For his part, David Mumford, emeritus professor at Brown University (United States) has been awarded by prizes “for his contributions to the field of algebraic geometry and the mathematics of computer vision”, pointing out that “he applied tools for calculating variations of the theory of vision and developed statistical models in image and pattern recognition “.
David Mumford, Mathematics Applied to the Brain
Mumford, after leading the area of algebraic geometry for 25 years, has dedicated himself since the 1980s to mathematically describe the human ability to understand an image. This mathematician printed the previous information variable to his studies, considering that the brain works by integrating what it perceives at each specific moment and crossing that data with previously captured information. ” If I’m walking through Boston and I hear a roar, I know it is highly unlikely that it is a tiger, so I recognize the engine of a truck, for example, ” explains Mumford himself. Its objective is to mathematically describe this human capacity.
In the words of the president of the Royal Spanish Mathematical Society , Antonio Campillo, “David Mumford represents all mathematical sciences and all researchers in mathematics, regardless of their field of interest in pure, applied, computational mathematics or in other areas of mathematics” .
Ingrid Daubechies, high-quality images
In the case of Ingrid Daubechies, her best known work is on wavelets . Basically they are a tool that allows you to decompose a mathematical object or an image into simpler components. In the practical sphere, this decomposition allows the transmission of images with a high load of information without losing quality . “In the transmission of a football match, for example, you can have clear images of the players, but not of the grass, which doesn’t matter so much to you,” says the researcher. In fact, Daubechies’ work has made it possible to compress the photographs with the now classic jpeg format.
For the director of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Manuel de León, Daubechies is “a clear example of the power of mathematics”, since “everyone who uses computers, the Internet, or digital images directly benefits from their achievements.”
Both Mumford and Daubechies have been presidents of the International Mathematical Union (IMU): Daubechies has been since 2010, and Mumford between 1994 and 1998.
