Mathematician Gian-Carlo Rota was the recipient of the 1996–1997 James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award. He was described by the Killian Award Committee as “a leading innovator and theorist in the transformation of combinatorics from a disparate collection of facts and techniques unworthy of serious mathematical consideration into an active, systematic, and profound branch of modern pure and applied mathematics.” In his lecture, Professor Rota presented some little-known facts of mathematics drawn from recent discoveries in geometry, mathematical analysis, and combinatorics. Read more at MIT News.