The Birthday and Diamond Jubilee Honours 2012 was released on 16 June 2012 in the United Kingdom and Tim Gowers was knighted for “services to mathematics”! So I suppose Tim is now becoming ”Sir William.”
It is possible that the Queen mainly thought about Tim’s wonderful research contributions. (Indeed, I was told, lately she took the relevant volumes of GAFA with her to bed.) But certainly Gowers’s services to mathematics include also the Princeton companion and the very short introduction, general-public presentations, Gower’s blog and Tim’s frequent
comments on other blogs, Polymath, Contributions to MathOverflow (the first user to get eight golden badges, among other things), Fighting Elsevier (which is now referred to as the “academic spring“) and more. Congratulations!
I’ll definitely raise a cup of tea for that!
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