Bjorn Poonen

Bjorn Poonen
Born	c. 1968 (age 45–46) Boston, Massachusetts
Nationality	United States
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Alma mater	University of California, Berkeley Harvard University
Doctoral advisor	Kenneth Alan Ribet
Notable awards	Chauvenet Prize (2011)

Bjorn Mikhail Poonen is a mathematician, four-time Putnam Competition winner and currently the Claude Shannon Professor of Mathematics at MIT.^[1] His research is primarily in number theory and algebraic geometry, but he has occasionally published in other subjects such as probability^[2] and computer science.^[3] He has edited two books,^[4][5] and his research articles have been cited by approximately 500 distinct authors.^[6] He is the founding managing editor of the journal Algebra & Number Theory,^[7] and serves also on the editorial boards of Involve^[8] and the A K Peters Research Notes in Mathematics book series.^{[citation needed]}

Education

In 1989, Poonen graduated from Harvard with an A.B. in Mathematics and Physics, summa cum laude.^{[citation needed]} He then studied under Kenneth Alan Ribet at the University of California, Berkeley, completing a Ph.D. there in 1994.^[9]

Academic positions

Poonen held postdoctoral positions at MSRI and Princeton University and served on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley from 1997 to 2008, before moving to MIT.^{[citation needed]} He has also held visiting positions at the Isaac Newton Institute (1998 and 2005), the Université Paris-Sud (2001), Harvard University (2007), and MIT (2007).^{[citation needed]}

Major honors and awards

• Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, 2012.^[10]
• American Academy of Arts and Sciences: elected in 2012^[11]
• Chauvenet Prize: the 2011 winner, for his article "Undecidability in number theory"^[12]
• David and Lucile Packard Fellowship^[13]
• Sloan Research Fellowship^[14]
• 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).^[15]
• International Mathematical Olympiad: silver medalist in 1985.^[16]
• American High School Mathematics Examination: only participant (out of 380,000) to receive a perfect score in 1985.^[17]

Trivia

• He co-authored a paper entitled "How to spread rumors fast".^[18]
• His Erdős-Bacon number is 5: he co-authored scholarly articles with Andrew Granville,^[19] Wen-Ch'ing Winnie Li,^[20] Andrew Odlyzko,^[21] and Peter Winkler,^[22] all of whom have Erdős number 1;^[23] and he appeared in the documentary Julia Robinson and Hilbert's Tenth Problem^[24] narrated by Danica McKellar, who has Bacon number 2.^[25]

References

External links

• Personal webpage