1995 Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Algebra

The Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Algebra is awarded every five years for a notable research memoir in algebra which has appeared in the previous five years. This prize and the Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Number Theory were established in honor of Professor Frank Nelson Cole, who served as secretary of the AMS from 1896 to 1920 and also served as editor-in-chief of the Bulletin for twenty-one years. The original fund was donated by Professor Cole out of monies presented to him on his retirement. The fund has been augmented by contributions from members of the Society, including a gift made in 1929 by Charles A. Cole, Professor Cole’s son, which more than doubled the size of the fund. In recent years, the Cole Prizes have been augmented by awards from the Leroy P. Steele Fund; currently they amount to $4,000. The Twenty-fifth Cole Prize is shared by David Harbater of the University of Pennsylvania and Michel Raynaud of Université de Paris-Sud, Orsay. The prize was presented at the Society’s 101st Annual Meeting in San Francisco in January 1995. The prize is awarded by the AMS Council, acting through a selection committee consisting of Barry Mazur, Shigefumi Mori, and Jean-Pierre Serre (chair). The text below includes the citations from the selection committee, the recipients’ responses upon receiving the prize, and a brief biographical sketch of each recipient.