The reception featured talks by friends, collaborators and fellow NAS members Robert Bryant of Duke University and Blaine Lawson of Stony Brook University. Harvey was elected to the NAS in May. He joined Rice in 1968, retired in 2003 as Rice’s Edgar Odell Lovett Professor of Mathematics and has continued to dedicate himself to research.
Harvey’s work focuses on analysis and geometry ⎯ specifically complex variables, partial differential equations, differential geometry and most recently nonlinear elliptic equations. His research on the properties of manifolds, and how to describe them, laid the foundation for the field of calibrated geometries, which illuminates fundamental connections between mathematical functions and geometric shapes. He co-authored the 1982 work which introduced calibrated geometry and is one of the most widely cited papers in the field.
