Nataliya Yufa for Cambridge Math Circle Lauren K. Williams illustrates a point about mathematics with a pool toy during a public lecture in September 2025. Williams won a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” in October 2025.

Harvard professor Lauren K. Williams has multiple dimensions: teacher, parent, and active Cambridge community member. As of this month, she can add one new one to that list: “genius.”

Williams is one of this year’s MacArthur Foundation Fellows , one of 22 “genius grant” recipients for 2025. She was recognized for her work on algebraic combinatorics, an area of math that has found surprising applications to topics ranging from shallow water waves to traffic flow to the scattering of elementary particles.

A key focus of her research is on the properties of mathemati

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