Bjorn Mikhail Poonen (born July 27, 1968, in Boston, Massachusetts) is a mathematician, four-time Putnam Competition winner, and a Distinguished Professor in Science in the Department of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[1] His research is primarily in arithmetic geometry, but he has occasionally published in other subjects such as probability[2] and computer science.[3] He has edited two books.[4][5]
Bjorn Poonen | |
|---|---|
 Poonen at Oberwolfach in 2011 | |
| Born | July 27, 1968 Boston, Massachusetts |
| Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley Harvard University |
| Awards |
|
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | MIT |
| Thesis | The Mordell-Weil theorem, rigidity, and pairings for Drinfeld modules (1994) |
| Doctoral advisor | Kenneth Alan Ribet |
| Doctoral students | |
| Website | math |
He is the founding managing editor of the journal Algebra & Number Theory,[6] and serves also on the editorial boards of Involve: A Journal of Mathematics[7] and the A K Peters Research Notes in Mathematics book series.[8]
Education
editPoonen is a 1985 alumnus of Winchester High School in Winchester, Massachusetts. In 1989, Poonen graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. in Mathematics and Physics, summa cum laude. He then studied under Kenneth Alan Ribet at the University of California, Berkeley, completing a PhD there in 1994.[9]
Academic positions
editPoonen held postdoctoral positions at Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and Princeton University and served on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley from 1997 to 2008, before moving to MIT.[8] He has also held visiting positions at the Isaac Newton Institute (1998 and 2005), the Université Paris-Sud (2001), Harvard (2007), and MIT (2007).[8]
Major honors and awards
edit- Joseph L. Doob Prize, 2023[10]
- Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, 2012.[11]
- American Academy of Arts and Sciences: elected in 2012[12]
- Chauvenet Prize: the 2011 winner, for his article "Undecidability in number theory"[13][14]
- Miller Research Professorship – University of California Berkeley.
- David and Lucile Packard Fellowship[15]
- Sloan Research Fellowship[16]
- William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition: winner in 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1988 (the only other four-time winners since 1938 are Don Coppersmith, Arthur Rubin, Ravi D. Vakil, Gabriel Carroll, Reid W. Barton, Daniel Kane and Brian R. Lawrence).[17]
- International Mathematical Olympiad: silver medalist in 1985.[18]
- American High School Mathematics Examination: only participant (out of 380,000) to receive a perfect score in 1985.[19]
Trivia
edit- Poonen co-authored a paper entitled "How to spread rumors fast".[20]
References
edit- ^ "Profile". MIT Mathematics. Retrieved October 14, 2023.
- ^ Amir Dembo, Qi-Man Shao, Bjorn Poonen, and Ofer Zeitouni, "Random polynomials with few or no real zeros", Journal of the American Mathematical Society 15 (2002), 857–892.
- ^ Poonen, Bjorn (1993). "The Worst Case in Shellsort and Related Algorithms". Journal of Algorithms. 15 (1). Elsevier BV: 101–124. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.138.295. doi:10.1006/jagm.1993.1032. ISSN 0196-6774.
- ^ Kedlaya, Kiran S.; Poonen, Bjorn; Vakil, Ravi (March 24, 2011). The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition 1985–2000. Mathematical Association of America. ISBN 978-0-88385-827-1.
- ^ "Arithmetic of Higher-Dimensional Algebraic Varieties". Progress in Mathematics. Vol. 226. Boston, MA: Birkhäuser Boston. 2004. doi:10.1007/978-0-8176-8170-8. ISBN 978-1-4612-6471-2. ISSN 0743-1643.
- ^ "Algebra & Number Theory". MSP. May 2, 2005. Retrieved October 14, 2023.
- ^ "Involve". msp.org. May 2, 2007. Retrieved October 14, 2023.
- ^ a b c Curriculum vitae, retrieved January 28, 2015.
- ^ Bjorn Poonen at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- ^ "Joseph L. Doob Prize". American Mathematical Society. November 26, 2018. Retrieved October 14, 2023.
- ^ "Fellows of the American Mathematical Society". American Mathematical Society. November 26, 2018. Retrieved October 14, 2023.
- ^ "American Academy of Arts & Sciences". www.amacad.org. Retrieved October 23, 2016.
- ^ "Chauvenet Prizes | Mathematical Association of America". mathdl.maa.org. Retrieved October 23, 2016.
- ^ Poonen, Bjorn (March 2008), "Undecidability in Number Theory" (PDF), Notices of the American Mathematical Society: 344–350
- ^ Packard fellows in mathematics Archived April 15, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Notices Amer. Math. Soc. 45, no. 6, (June–July 1998), p. 723.
- ^ "Putnam Competition Individual and Team Winners | Mathematical Association of America". www.maa.org. Retrieved October 23, 2016.
- ^ "International Mathematical Olympiad". www.imo-official.org. Retrieved October 23, 2016.
- ^ American High School Mathematics Examination results, page 31
- ^ Fan, C. Kenneth; Poonen, Bjorn; Poonen, George (1997). "How to Spread Rumors Fast". Mathematics Magazine. 70 (1). Informa UK Limited: 40–42. doi:10.1080/0025570x.1997.11996496. ISSN 0025-570X.
