John M. Ball

Who is John M. Ball?

Sir John Macleod Ball, FRSE FRS is Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He was the President of the International Mathematical Union from 2003–06 and a Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford. He was educated at the University of Cambridge and Sussex University, and prior to taking up his Oxford post was a professor of mathematics at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.

Ball's research interests include elasticity, the calculus of variations, and infinite-dimensional dynamical systems. He was knighted in the New Year Honours list for 2006 "for services to Science". He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

He was a member of the first Abel Prize in 2002 and for the Fields Medal in 1998. From 1996 - 1998 he was president of the London Mathematical Society, and from 2003 - 2006 he was president of the International Mathematical Union, IMU. In October 2011 he was elected on the Executive Board of ICSU for a three-year period starting January 2012. Ball is listed as an ISI highly cited researcher. Ball's Erdős number is 3.