Eric Michael Rains (born 23 August 1973) is an American mathematician specializing in coding theory and special functions, especially applications from and to noncommutative algebraic geometry.[1]

Biography

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Eric Rains was 14 when he began classes in 1987. He left Case Western Reserve University with bachelor's degrees in computer science and physics and a master's degree in mathematics at age 17.[2]

By means of a Churchill Scholarship he studied mathematics and physics at the University of Cambridge for the academic year 1991–1992, receiving a Certificate of Advanced Study in Mathematics.[3] He received his PhD in 1995 from Harvard University with thesis Topics in Probability on Compact Lie Groups under the supervision of Persi Diaconis.[4] From 1995 to 1996, Rains worked at the IDA's Center for Communications Research (CCR) in Princeton. From 1996 to 2002 he was a researcher for AT&T Labs. From 2002 to 2003 he returned to the CCR in Princeton. In 2003, Rains became a full professor at the University of California, Davis. From 2007-2023, Rains was a full professor at Caltech and served as the Executive Officer of the Caltech Mathematics Department from 2019 to 2022. As of Fall 2023, Rains is a professor emeritus at Caltech, per their website.

In the fall of 2006 he was a visiting professor at the University of Melbourne.[3] He is the co-author with Gabriele Nebe and Neil J. A. Sloane of the 2006 book Self-Dual Codes and Invariant Theory.[5]

In 2007, Rains was a plenary speaker at the Western Sectional meeting of the American Mathematical Society (AMS).[3] In 2010 he was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Hyderabad.[6] He was elected a Fellow of the AMS in the class of 2018 for "contributions to coding theory, the theory of random matrices, the study of special functions, non-commutative geometry and number theory".[7]

Selected publications

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References

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  1. ^ "Eric M. Rains". The Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy, Caltech (caltech.edu).
  2. ^ "Alum who graduated at age 17 with three degrees returns to CWRU for talk". The Daily, Case Western Reserve University. 16 September 2013.
  3. ^ a b c "Eric M. Rains, Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). caltech.edu.
  4. ^ Eric M. Rains at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  5. ^ Gabriele Nebe; Eric M. Rains; Neil J. A. Sloane (20 May 2006). Self-Dual Codes and Invariant Theory. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 978-3-540-30731-0.
  6. ^ Rains, Eric M. (2011). "Elliptic Analogues of the Macdonald and Koornwinder Polynomials". Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians 2010 (ICM 2010). Vol. 4. pp. 2530–2554. doi:10.1142/9789814324359_0157. ISBN 978-981-4324-30-4.
  7. ^ "New Class of Fellows of the AMS" (PDF). Notices of the AMS. 65 (3): 346–348. March 2018.