Jean Bourgain is a Belgian
mathematicianA mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
. He has been a faculty member at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and, from 1985 until 1995, professor at
Institut des Hautes Études ScientifiquesThe Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques is a French institute supporting advanced research in mathematics and theoretical physics...
at
Bures-sur-YvetteBures-sur-Yvette is a commune in the Essonne department in Île-de-France in northern France.Inhabitants of Bures-sur-Yvette are known as Buressois.-Geography:...
in France, and since 1994 at the
Institute for Advanced StudyThe Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States, is an independent postgraduate center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It was founded in 1930 by Abraham Flexner...
in
Princeton, New JerseyPrinceton is a community located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It is best known as the location of Princeton University, which has been sited in the community since 1756...
. He is currently an editor for the prestigious
Annals of MathematicsThe Annals of Mathematics is a bimonthly mathematical journal published by Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study. It ranks amongst the most prestigious mathematics journals in the world by criteria such as impact factor.-History:The journal began as The Analyst in 1874 and was...
.
He received his Ph.D. from the
Vrije Universiteit BrusselThe Vrije Universiteit Brussel is a Flemish university located in Brussels, Belgium. It has two campuses referred to as Etterbeek and Jette.The university's name is sometimes abbreviated by "VUB" or translated to "Free University of Brussels"...
in 1977.
His work is in various areas of
mathematical analysisMathematical analysis, which mathematicians refer to simply as analysis, has its beginnings in the rigorous formulation of infinitesimal calculus. It is a branch of pure mathematics that includes the theories of differentiation, integration and measure, limits, infinite series, and analytic functions...
such as the
geometryGeometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers ....
of
Banach spaceIn mathematics, Banach spaces is the name for complete normed vector spaces, one of the central objects of study in functional analysis. A complete normed vector space is a vector space V with a norm ||·|| such that every Cauchy sequence in V has a limit in V In mathematics, Banach spaces is the...
s,
harmonic analysisHarmonic analysis is the branch of mathematics that studies the representation of functions or signals as the superposition of basic waves. It investigates and generalizes the notions of Fourier series and Fourier transforms...
,
analytic number theoryIn mathematics, analytic number theory is a branch of number theory that uses methods from mathematical analysis to solve problems about the integers. It is often said to have begun with Dirichlet's introduction of Dirichlet L-functions to give the first proof of Dirichlet's theorem on arithmetic...
,
combinatoricsCombinatorics is a branch of mathematics concerning the study of finite or countable discrete structures. Aspects of combinatorics include counting the structures of a given kind and size , deciding when certain criteria can be met, and constructing and analyzing objects meeting the criteria ,...
,
ergodic theoryErgodic theory is a branch of mathematics that studies dynamical systems with an invariant measure and related problems. Its initial development was motivated by problems of statistical physics....
, partial differential equations,
spectral theoryIn mathematics, spectral theory is an inclusive term for theories extending the eigenvector and eigenvalue theory of a single square matrix to a much broader theory of the structure of operators in a variety of mathematical spaces. It is a result of studies of linear algebra and the solutions of...
and recently also in
group theoryIn mathematics and abstract algebra, group theory studies the algebraic structures known as groups.The concept of a group is central to abstract algebra: other well-known algebraic structures, such as rings, fields, and vector spaces can all be seen as groups endowed with additional operations and...
. He has been recognised by a number of awards, most notably the
Fields MedalThe 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 1994.
In 2000 Bourgain connected the Kakeya problem to
arithmetic combinatoricsArithmetic combinatorics arose out of the interplay between number theory, combinatorics, ergodic theory and harmonic analysis. It is about combinatorial estimates associated with arithmetic operations...
.
In 2009 Bourgain was elected a foreign member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of SciencesThe Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. The Academy is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization which acts to promote the sciences, primarily the natural sciences and mathematics.The Academy was founded on 2...
.
In 2010 he received the
Shaw PrizeThe Shaw Prize is an annual award first presented by the Shaw Prize Foundation in 2004. Established in 2002 in Hong Kong, it honours living "individuals, regardless of race, nationality and religious belief, who have achieved significant breakthrough in academic and scientific research or...
in Mathematics.
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