Ben J. Green

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Ben J. Green
Born February 27, 1977 (1977-02-27) (age 31)
Bristol, England
Residence Cambridge, England
Nationality British
Fields Mathematician
Institutions University of Bristol
University of Cambridge
Alma mater Trinity College, Cambridge
Doctoral advisor Timothy Gowers
Notable awards Clay Research Award (2004)
Salem Prize (2005)
SASTRA Ramanujan Prize (2007)
This article is about the mathematician. For the British World War II internee, see: Ben Greene.

Ben Joseph Green (born February 27, 1977, Bristol, England) is a British mathematician, specializing in combinatorics and number theory.

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[edit] Early years

Ben Green was born on February 27, 1977 in Bristol, England. He studied at local schools of Bristol. IMO in 1994 and 1995. He entered Trinity College, University of Cambridge in 1995 and completed his B.A. in mathematics in 1998. He was first class in all three years. He earned his doctorate under English mathematician Timothy Gowers in 2003. His doctorate thesis was Topics in arithmetic combinatorics. He was a research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge between 2001 and 2005. He became a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Bristol from January 2005 to September 2006. In September 2006 he returned to Cambridge as the first Herchel Smith Professor of Pure Mathematics. He was also a Research Fellow of the Clay Mathematics Institute and held various positions at institutes such as Princeton University, University of British Columbia, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

[edit] Mathematics

Green has published several important results in both combinatorics and number theory. These include improving the estimate by Jean Bourgain of the size of arithmetic progressions in sumsets, as well as a proof of the Cameron–Erdős conjecture on sum-free sets of natural numbers.

His work in demonstrating that every set of primes of positive relative upper density contains an arithmetic progression of length three then led to his breakthrough 2004 work with mathematician Terence Tao now known as the Green–Tao theorem. This theorem showed that for all n there exist infinitely many arithmetic progressions of length n in the prime numbers.

[edit] Awards and honors

Green received the Clay Research Award in 2004 and the Salem Prize in 2005 for his contributions to combinatorial number theory related to progressions of primes.

In 2007 he was awarded the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize.

[edit] References