Richard P. Stanley is a Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is universally recognized as a leading expert in the field of combinatorics and its applications to a variety of other mathematical disciplines. In addition to the seminal two-volume book Enumerative Combinatorics, he is the author of Combinatorics and Commutative Algebra (1983) as well as more than 100 research articles in mathematics. Among Stanley's many distinctions are membership in the National Academy of Sciences (elected in 1995), the 2001 Leroy P. Steele Prize for mathematical exposition and the 2003 Schock Prize.
