Alan Baker, FRS

Royal Society

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

 (born on 19 August 1939) is an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

. He was born in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. He is known for his work on effective methods in number theory

Number theory

Number theory is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers. Number theorists study prime numbers as well...

, in particular those arising from transcendence theory

Transcendence theory

Transcendence theory is a branch of number theory that investigates transcendental numbers, in both qualitative and quantitative ways.-Transcendence:...

. He was awarded the Fields Medal

Fields Medal

The Fields Medal, officially known as International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians not over 40 years of age at each International Congress of the International Mathematical Union , a meeting that takes place every four...

 in 1970, at age 31. His academic career started as a student of Harold Davenport

Harold Davenport

Harold Davenport FRS was an English mathematician, known for his extensive work in number theory.-Early life:...

, at University College London

University College London

University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...

 and later at Cambridge. He is a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...

.

His interests are in number theory, transcendence

Transcendence theory

Transcendence theory is a branch of number theory that investigates transcendental numbers, in both qualitative and quantitative ways.-Transcendence:...

, logarithmic form

Logarithmic form

In contexts including complex manifolds and algebraic geometry, a logarithmic differential form is a meromorphic differential form with poles of a certain kind....

, effective methods

Effective results in number theory

For historical reasons and in order to have application to the solution of Diophantine equations, results in number theory have been scrutinised more than in other branches of mathematics to see if their content is effectively computable...

, Diophantine geometry

Diophantine geometry

In mathematics, diophantine geometry is one approach to the theory of Diophantine equations, formulating questions about such equations in terms of algebraic geometry over a ground field K that is not algebraically closed, such as the field of rational numbers or a finite field, or more general...

 and Diophantine analysis.

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