The mission of the Department of Mathematics is to pursue outstanding research and to provide high quality instruction in pure and applied mathematics. The Department offers mathematics instruction to undergraduate students in all disciplines. The Department has one of the largest and most comprehensive mathematics graduate programs in the world and supports a large number of postdoctoral positions, offering training for careers in the mathematical sciences. The distinguished faculty have interests in many areas of the mathematical sciences, including Actuarial Science, Algebra, Analysis, Applied Mathematics, Combinatorics, Differential Equations, Geometry, Logic, Number Theory, Probability Theory, and Topology. The Department's faculty conducts research that supports the on-going theoretical development of the mathematical sciences, and that simultaneously promotes the interdisciplinary use of mathematics in science, engineering and other fields.

Known for the high quality of its academic programs and the outstanding facilities and resources available to students and faculty, Illinois ranks among the world's great universities. Undergraduate admission is highly selective. Fifty-five percent of freshman ranked in the top 10% of their class; in 2006, freshmen students in the middle 50% had ACT scores between 26 and 31. Our campus includes 272 major buildings on 1,468 acres, serving approximately 3,000 faculty members, 31,500 undergraduates, and 11,250 graduate and professional students. Students from the United States and 100 countries each year enroll in programs offered by 16 colleges and instructional units.

Another prime indicator of the University's excellence is the success of its faculty and alumni: 21 Nobel Prize faculty and alumni winners; and many noted scholars, including one Crafoord Prize and 20 Pulitzer Prize winners. More than seventy faculty members belong to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, or the National Academy of Engineering. One faculty has won the Fields Medal in Mathematics, ten scientists have received the National Medal of Science, and more than sixty have received the National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award while on the faculty. Academic resources on our campus are among the finest in the world. Our University Library has the largest collection of any public university in the world and ranks third among U.S. academic libraries.

Students and scholars find the University an ideal place to conduct inter- and multidisciplinary research. The most visible example of the University's commitment to such study is the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, where 18 research groups from 16 University departments work within and across three broadly defined themes: biological intelligence, human-computer intelligent interaction, and molecular and electronic nanostructures. Click for more facts about the University of Illinois.