Richard Taylor to Discuss Primes and Equations in Lecture at Institute for Advanced Study

February 1: Richard Taylor on Primes and Equations

Richard Taylor, Professor in the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study, will speak on “Primes and Equations” on Wednesday, February 1, at 4:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall on the Institute campus.

Taylor, who joined the Faculty in January, is one of the world’s leading number theorists. He and his collaborators have developed powerful new techniques to solve important longstanding problems.

In this talk, Taylor will introduce prime numbers and “congruences” and illustrate their connection to Diophantine equations, i.e., whole number (or fractional) solutions to polynomial equations, one of the oldest subjects in mathematics. These equations were studied by the ancient Greeks (including Diophantus) and it may be that the Babylonians also considered them. They remain one of the most active areas of mathematics today. This talk should require no more than middle school mathematics.

Taylor took his BA from the University of Cambridge in 1983 and his Ph.D. from Princeton University. He is the recipient of numerous prizes, including the 2007 Shaw Prize, shared with Professor Emeritus Robert Langlands; the 2007 Clay Research Award; and the Academy of Sciences at Göttingen’s 2005 Dannie Heineman Prize.

A Fellow of the Royal Society of London since 1995, Taylor was a Visiting Assistant Professor at California Institute of Technology in 1992; Visiting Professor at Harvard University in 1994; and Miller Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley in 1999. In 1995, he was elected to the Savilian Professorship of Geometry in the University of Oxford and a Fellowship of New College. Taylor joined Harvard University as a Professor of Mathematics in 1996 and was named the Herchel Smith Professor of Mathematics in 2002.

For further information about the lecture, which is free and open to the public, please call (609) 734-8175, or visit the Public Events page on the Institute website, www.ias.edu.

About the Institute for Advanced Study

The Institute for Advanced Study is one of the world’s leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. The Institute exists to encourage and support curiosity-driven research in the sciences and humanities—the original, often speculative thinking that produces advances in knowledge that change the way we understand the world. Work at the Institute takes place in four Schools: Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Social Science. It provides for the mentoring of scholars by a permanent Faculty of approximately 30, and it ensures the freedom to undertake research that will make significant contributions in any of the broad range of fields in the sciences and humanities studied at the Institute.

The Institute, founded in 1930, is a private, independent academic institution located in Princeton, New Jersey. Its more than 6,000 former Members hold positions of intellectual and scientific leadership throughout the academic world. Thirty-three Nobel Laureates and 40 out of 56 Fields Medalists, as well as many winners of the Wolf and MacArthur prizes, have been affiliated with the Institute.