Ruth Jeannette Williams is an Australian-born American mathematician at theUniversity of California, San Diego where she holds the Charles Lee Powell Chair as a Distinguished Professor of Mathematics. Her research concernsprobability theory andstochastic processes.^[1]

Williams was born in Australia and moved to the United States in 1978.^[2]

Williams graduated from theUniversity of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Sciences, with honors, in 1976 and a Master of Science in mathematics in 1978.^[3] Williams went on to earn her Ph.D. fromStanford University in 1983, under the supervision ofChung Kai-lai.^[4][5]

Williams was president of theInstitute of Mathematical Statistics from 2011 to 2012.

Williams is a member of theNational Academy of Sciences and afellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences, theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science, theAmerican Mathematical Society, theInstitute of Mathematical Statistics, theInstitute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences,^[6] and theSociety for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.^[7] In 1998 she was an Invited Speaker of theInternational Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin.^[8] Williams was anAmerican Mathematical Society (AMS) Council member at large.^[9]

Her other awards and honors include:

• Alfred P. Sloan Fellow (1988)^[10]
• Guggenheim Fellow (2001)^[11]
• Best Publication Award of the INFORMS Applied Probability Society (2007), jointly withAmber L. Puha andH. Christian Gromoll^[12]
• John von Neumann Theory Prize (2016), jointly withMartin I. Reiman for "seminal research contributions over the past several decades, to the theory and applications of stochastic networks/systems and their heavy traffic approximations".^[12][13]
• Honorary Doctorate from the University of Melbourne (2018)^[2]
• Award for the Advancement of Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences (2017), annual INFORMS meeting^[12]
• Honorary Doctor of Science degree from La Trobe University in Australia^[12]
• National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator^[12]

• Living people
• 20th-century American mathematicians
• 21st-century American mathematicians
• American statisticians
• American women statisticians
• Stanford University alumni
• University of California, San Diego faculty
• Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
• Fellows of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics
• Fellows of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
• Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
• Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
• John von Neumann Theory Prize winners
• 20th-century American women mathematicians
• 21st-century American women mathematicians
• American probability theorists

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Use mdy dates from February 2024
• Articles with hCards
• Year of birth missing (living people)