Congratulations to Srikanth B. Iyengar (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) and Irena Peeva (Cornell University) for being named Fellows of the AMS for 2014. Iyengar was cited for contributions to commutative algebra, representation theory, homotopy theory, and algebraic geometry. Peeva was cited for contributions to commutative algebra and its applications. See the list of all the 2014 Fellows here.
I wonder if this ptcircae leads to any measurable difference in the distribution of last names in the sciences (reasoning that those with last names starting with A will have more name recognition than those whose last names start with Z ). Rice’s department (leaving out post docs) has 14 profs whose last name is A-J, and 6 with last name K-Z. Using the data linked below, one would expect the split to be 48% A-J, 52% K-Z, though this is a very small data set.