Wei Zhang (mathematician)

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Wei Zhang
Born1981 (age 42–43)
Alma materColumbia University
Peking University
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Columbia University
ThesisModularity of Generating Functions of Special Cycles on Shimura Varieties (2009)
Doctoral advisorShou-Wu Zhang

Wei Zhang (Chinese: 张伟; born 1981) is a Chinese mathematician specializing in number theory. He is currently a Professor of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[1]

Education[edit]

Zhang grew up in Sichuan province in China and attended Chengdu No.7 High School. [2] He earned his B.S. in Mathematics from Peking University in 2004 and his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2009 under the supervision of Shou-Wu Zhang.[3][4]

Career[edit]

Zhang was a postdoctoral researcher and Benjamin Peirce Fellow at Harvard University from 2009 to 2011. He was a member of the mathematics faculty at Columbia University from 2011 to 2017, initially as an assistant professor before becoming a full professor in 2015. He has been a full professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 2017.[4][5]

Work[edit]

His collaborations with Zhiwei Yun, Xinyi Yuan and Xinwen Zhu have received attention in publications such as Quanta Magazine and Business Insider.[6][7] In particular, his work with Zhiwei Yun on the Taylor expansion of L-functions is "already being hailed as one of the most exciting breakthroughs in an important area of number theory in the last 30 years."[6]

Zhang has also made substantial contributions to the global Gan–Gross–Prasad conjecture.

Awards[edit]

He was a recipient of the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize in 2010, for "far-reaching contributions by himself and in collaboration with others to a broad range of areas in mathematics, including number theory, automorphic forms, L-functions, trace formulas, representation theory, and algebraic geometry.”[8] In 2013, Zhang received a Sloan Research Fellowship; in 2016 Zhang was awarded the Morningside Gold Medal of Mathematics.[4][9] In December 2017 he was awarded 2018 New Horizons In Mathematics Prize together with Zhiwei Yun, Aaron Naber and Maryna Viazovska. In 2019 he received the Clay Research Award.[10]

He was included in the 2019 class of fellows of the American Mathematical Society "for contributions to number theory, algebraic geometry and geometric representation theory".[11] He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2023.[12]

Publications (selected)[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Wei Zhang | MIT Mathematics".
  2. ^ "成都七中2000届校友张伟获2019年克雷研究奖,首位华人数学家". 15 September 2019.
  3. ^ "Wei Zhang", Mathematics Genealogy Project.
  4. ^ a b c "Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). Wei Zhang. Retrieved September 4, 2020.
  5. ^ "Wei Zhang". Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Mathematics. Retrieved September 4, 2020.
  6. ^ a b "Math Quartet Joins Forces on Unified Theory", Quanta Magazine. Retrieved on 4 December 2016.
  7. ^ "Math Quartet Joins Forces on Unified Theory", Business Insider. Retrieved on 4 December 2016.
  8. ^ Notices of the AMS, January 2011, American Mathematical Society.
  9. ^ "Wei Zhang awarded the 2016 ICCM Morningside Gold Medal", Columbia University. Published 18 August 2016.
  10. ^ Clay Research Award 2019
  11. ^ 2019 Class of the Fellows of the AMS, American Mathematical Society, retrieved 2018-11-07
  12. ^ New members, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2023, retrieved 2023-04-21