Richard Stanley, a most famous and influential mathematician in my area of combinatorics, the master of finding deep connections between combinatorics and other areas of pure mathematics, and my postdoctoral advisor, has just won the Steele prize for lifetime achievement, among the most prestigious mathematical prizes.
The citation reads: “Stanley has revolutionized enumerative combinatorics, revealing deep connections with other branches of mathematics, such as commutative algebra, topology, algebraic geometry, probability, convex geometry, and representation theory. In doing so, he solved important longstanding combinatorial problems, often reinvigorating these other fields with new combinatorial methods. Through his outstanding research; excellent expository works; and many PhD students, collaborators and colleagues, he continues to influence the field of combinatorics worldwide.”
Congratulations to Richard and to the community of combinatorics.
Richard’s work is mentioned in many posts over my blog but let me point you specifically to:
The post Happy Birthday Richard Stanley! describes seven early papers by Richard Stanley that you must read!
Richard Stanley’s work is mentioned in these posts (among more) that are related to the upper bound theorem and the g-conjecture. (Eran Nevo) The g-conjecture II: The commutative algebra connection,); (Eran Nevo) The g-conjecture I, and How the g-conjecture came about ; Richard Stanley: How the Proof of the Upper Bound Theorem (for spheres) was Found; Beyond the g-conjecture – algebraic combinatorics of cellular spaces I; Open problem session of HUJI-COMBSEM: Problem #5, Gil Kalai – the 3ᵈ problem; Amazing: Karim Adiprasito proved the g-conjecture for spheres!; Amazing: Simpler and more general proofs for the g-theorem by Stavros Argyrios Papadakis and Vasiliki Petrotou, and by Karim Adiprasito, Stavros Argyrios Papadakis, and Vasiliki Petrotou.
Additional posts:
A Mysterious Duality Relation for 4-dimensional Polytopes.
Around the Garsia-Stanley’s Partitioning Conjecture
To cheer you up in difficult times 10: Noam Elkies’ Piano Improvisations and more;
Here is a trivia quiz (2014) about Richard
Correct or incorrect?
(1) Richard drove cross-country at least 8 times (2) In his youth, at a wild party, Richard Stanley found a proof of FLT consisting of a few mathematical symbols. (3) Richard jumped at least once from an airplane (4) Richard is actively interested in the study of consciousness (5) Richard found a mathematical way to divide by zero
Answer: All five statement above are correct!
Combinatorics and more 
Trivia items (1)-(4) are truly surprising facts about Richard. Item (5) refers to a class he gave on symmetric functions based on MacDonald book (the first edition). At some point he wrote on the blackboard something like
. I raised my hand and said that this is not a proper mathematical operation. Why? asked Richard. I said that it is impossible to divide by 
.
and gradually some people in the class and Richard himself understood my objection.
Richard replied that he see no problem in dividing by