Professor Ruth Williams

Short citation at year of election

Ruth Williams is a distinguished mathematician specialising in probability theory. Her seminal research contributions have had a deep and lasting impact on heavy traffic analysis within the field of stochastic networks, which describe real-world systems running at near maximum capacity. These arise in a variety of applications in science and engineering, including in systems biology, high-tech manufacturing, computer systems, telecommunications, transportation, and business service systems. In her PhD thesis and in later work on reflecting Brownian motions in polyhedral domains, Williams developed theory and principles enabling the identification and verification of important approximations for multiclass queueing networks. This research also provided the foundations for subsequent significant research by Williams and others.