The London Mathematical Society (LMS) is pleased to announce Jonathan Keating FRS, as President-Designate. Professor Keating has been the Henry Overton Wills Professor of Mathematics at the University of Bristol since 2012 and Chair of the Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research since 2015. Professor Keating will take over from the current President, Professor Caroline Series FRS, in November 2019. Professor Keating is known for his contributions to random matrix theory and quantum chaos, and their connections with number theory.
Professor Keating obtained his PhD from the University of Bristol in 1989 under Professor Sir Michael Berry FRS. He began his career at Bristol as a Royal Society Research Fellow, before taking up a lectureship at the University of Manchester in 1991 and returning to Bristol as Reader in Applied Mathematics in 1995. He was promoted to a Chair in Mathematical Physics at Bristol in 1997.
His main areas of research concern the quantum mechanics of chaotic and complex systems, random matrix theory, and applications of random matrix theory to the theory of the Riemann zeta-function and other L-functions. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2009 and received the London Mathematical Society Fröhlich Prize in 2010. He currently holds a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award and an ERC Advanced Grant.
Professor Keating has served the wider mathematical community with his involvement in the editorial boards of several scientific journals, including as a member of the editorial board of Nonlinearity from 1997-2004 and as joint Editor-in-Chief from 2004-2012. Under his leadership the Heilbronn Institute of Mathematical Research has continued to support LMS Research Schools, which provide training for young researchers in a core area of mathematics and also sponsorship of the Bronze Medal for Mathematical Sciences at the annual STEM for Britain competition in the House of Commons. Professor Keating has also been involved directly with the work of the Society as a member of the LMS Prizes Committee from 2015-2018.