Contents
Manjul Bhargava
Winning the Fields Medal for new ways to count and understand important number systems.
Generalised factorials · Higher Composition Laws
- Born
- 8 August 1974
- Birthplace
- Hamilton, Canada
More people
Manjul Bhargava
Bhargava’s number theory connects elegant patterns with difficult questions about equations. Raised in the United States, he also draws inspiration from Sanskrit and Indian classical music.
Early life
A mathematical home
Grew up on Long Island; his mother, a mathematics professor, was his first teacher.
Harvard and Princeton
Studied at Harvard and earned his Princeton doctorate in 2001 under Andrew Wiles.
Career
- 2001
Doctoral breakthrough
Completed Higher Composition Laws, extending ideas associated with Carl Friedrich Gauss.
- 2003
Princeton professor
Was appointed a tenured full professor after research fellowships.
- 2014
Fields Medal
Received the medal for advances in the geometry of numbers and elliptic curves.
Contributions
Generalised factorials
Published a new approach to the factorial function and its extensions.
Higher Composition Laws
Published a series developing new relationships between algebraic structures.
Elliptic curves
With Arul Shankar, established major results about the average number of independent rational solutions.
Beyond mathematics
Tabla
Studied the Indian percussion instrument with teachers including Zakir Hussain.
Sanskrit
Learned Sanskrit from his grandfather and has spoken about the links between poetry, rhythm and mathematics.
Sources & photo credit
Life, career and references ↗Institutional biography and contributions ↗Photo: IMU. FAL · Original image. Cropped and displayed in monochrome.
