Stuart Geman

Timeline

1. 1967–1977

   Physics through a doctorate

   Born in Chicago in 1949, he studies physics at the University of Michigan from 1967 and completes a bachelor's degree in 1971. A master's degree in physiology at Dartmouth College and Dartmouth Medical School follows in 1973. He finishes an applied mathematics doctorate at MIT in 1977, advised by Herman Chernoff and Frank Kozin, with a dissertation on stochastic differential equations with smooth mixing processes.

2. 1977

   Joining the Brown faculty

   He joins the faculty at Brown University in 1977 and works in the Pattern Theory group.

3. 1984

   The Gibbs sampler

   With his brother Donald Geman, he introduces Gibbs sampling in 1984 for Bayesian image analysis in Stochastic Relaxation, Gibbs Distributions, and the Bayesian Restoration of Images. He and Donald give the first proof of convergence for simulated annealing. In 1984 he becomes a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and receives a Presidential Young Investigator Award.

4. 1986

   Image models at the congress

   He gives an invited lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1986 with C. Graffigne on Markov random field image models and their application to computer vision.

5. 1997

   The James Manning chair

   He is named to the James Manning chair at Brown in 1997.

6. 2011

   Election to the academy

   The National Academy of Sciences elects him in 2011 as one of 72 new members. He studies a mathematical formulation of compositionality for neural activity and for computer vision systems.

7. 2024

   An Emmy for restoration

   He receives an Engineering, Science and Technology Emmy Award in 2024 with Kevin Manbeck, John Mertus, and Michael Braca for developing DRS Nova film and video restoration software.

8. As of October 2026

   Professor at Brown

   He is the James Manning Professor of Applied Mathematics at Brown University, studying compositionality as a basis for learning in biological systems and its applications to artificial vision. In January 2025 he is a professor of applied mathematics at Brown.