Rick Durrett, a probabilist, joined the mathematics faculty at Duke in Fall 2010. Durrett received his bachelor's and master's degree in Mathematics from Emory University and his Ph.D. in operations research from Stanford University (1976). His first appointment was in the Mathematics Department at UCLA where he rose to the rank of full professor in 1984. In 1985 he moved to Cornell University. Durrett is the author of over 170 research papers and nine books. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2007.

Durrett has made contributions to pure mathematics solving a number of open questions in Brownian motion, particle systems, and random graph theory, three relatively distinct subfields of pure probability. Random graphs and processes on them has been a very hot topic for the last ten years because of applications to physics, social networks, the internet, and now to biology. His text, Random Graph Dynamics, provided an entrance point for a new generation of young mathematics researchers.

Durrett is also known as the leader in applying the ideas and techniques of probability theory to biological systems where his research has had important influence in ecology and genetics. Not only has he made important scientific advances personally, but he has been pivotal in popularizing important biological questions in the mathematics community and in educating biologists to the power of mathematical methods. His paper with Simon Levin, "The importance of being discrete (and spatial)" helped to advance the use of stochastic spatial models in Ecology. In the general area of genetics, Durrett has made contributions to microsatellite evolution, the study of selective sweeps, and more recently in cancer modeling. His book, Probability Models of DNA Sequence Evolution, is a useful introduction for mathematicians.

Rick Durrett has trained 39 Ph.D. students and mentored numerous postdocs. He is known for his warmth and the genuine interest he takes in the well-being of his students, as well as for his humor and informal manor. At Duke, he will play a central role, along with Jonathan Mattingly and Mauro Maggioni, in probability research, as well being a leading figure in the mathematical biology research group. Durrett is the Associate Director of the NSF-supported Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute in the Research Triangle Park, whose goal is to forge a new synthesis of statistics and applied mathematics with disciplinary science to confront the very hardest and most important data-driven scientific challenges.