Richard Borcherds
Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox scientist Richard Ewen Borcherds (Template:IPAc-en; born 29 November 1959)<ref name="whoswho"/> is a British<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> mathematician currently working in quantum field theory. He is known for his work in lattices, group theory, and infinite-dimensional algebras,<ref name="workAMS">James Lepowsky, "The Work of Richard Borcherds", Notices of the American Mathematical Society, Volume 46, Number 1 (January 1999).</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> for which he was awarded the Fields Medal in 1998. He is well known for his proof of monstrous moonshine using ideas from string theory.
Early life and education
Borcherds was born in Cape Town, South Africa, but the family moved to Birmingham in the United Kingdom when he was six months old.<ref name=singh/>
Borcherds was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham. As a student, Borcherds won a gold medal, silver medal, and special prize in the International Mathematical Olympiad.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He attended university at Trinity College, Cambridge,<ref name="ub">Template:Cite web</ref> where he studied under John Horton Conway.<ref name="ams">Template:Cite journal</ref>
Career
After receiving his doctorate in 1985, Borcherds has held various alternating positions at Cambridge and the University of California, Berkeley, serving as Morrey Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Berkeley from 1987 to 1988. He was a Royal Society University Research Fellow.<ref name=urfrs>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="ub"/> From 1996 he held a Royal Society Research Professorship at Cambridge before returning to Berkeley in 1999 as Professor of Mathematics.<ref name="ub"/>
Mathematical work
He did notable work on the Monstrous moonshine theory.<ref name="workAMS" />
He introduced vertex algebras.<ref name="workGoddard" />
Autism
An interview with Simon Singh for The Guardian, in which Borcherds suggested he might have some sort of traits possibly associated with Asperger syndrome,<ref name=singh>Simon Singh, "Interview with Richard Borcherds", The Guardian (28 August 1998)</ref> led to a chapter about him in a book on autism by Simon Baron-Cohen.<ref name=sbc>Template:Cite book (see external links) records conversations with Richard Borcherds and his family.</ref><ref>High flying obsessives, The Guardian, December 2000</ref> Baron-Cohen insinuated that while Borcherds may have had autistic traits, he did not meet a formal diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome.<ref name=sbc/>
Awards and honours
In 1992 Borcherds was one of the first recipients of the EMS prizes awarded at the first European Congress of Mathematics in Paris, and in 1994 he was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Zurich.<ref name="ams"/> In 1994, he was elected to be a Fellow of the Royal Society.<ref name="royal">Template:Cite web</ref> In 1998 at the 23rd International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin, Germany he received the Fields Medal together with Maxim Kontsevich, William Timothy Gowers and Curtis T. McMullen.<ref name="ams"/> The award cited him "for his contributions to algebra, the theory of automorphic forms, and mathematical physics, including the introduction of vertex algebras and Borcherds' Lie algebras, the proof of the Conway-Norton moonshine conjecture<ref name="Borcherds 1992 pp. 405–444">Template:Cite journal</ref> and the discovery of a new class of automorphic infinite products." In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society,<ref>List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society. Retrieved 10 November 2012.</ref> and in 2014 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.<ref>National Academy of Sciences Members and Foreign Associates Elected Template:Webarchive, National Academy of Sciences, 29 April 2014.</ref>
References
Further reading
- Conway and Sloane, Sphere Packings, Lattices and Groups, Third Edition, Springer, 1998 Template:ISBN.
- Frenkel, Lepowsky and Meurman, Vertex Operator Algebras and the Monster, Academic Press, 1988 Template:ISBN.
- Kac, Victor, Vertex Algebras for Beginners, Second Edition, AMS 1997 Template:ISBN.
- Template:MacTutor Biography
- Mark Ronan (2007), Symmetry and the Monster: The Story of One of the Greatest Quests of Mathematics, Oxford University Press.
External links
Template:Fields medalists Template:FRS 1994 Template:Authority control
- 20th-century British mathematicians
- 21st-century British mathematicians
- Fields Medalists
- Group theorists
- Fellows of the Royal Society
- Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
- Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
- University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty
- 1959 births
- Living people
- People educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham
- Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
- Whitehead Prize winners
- International Mathematical Olympiad participants
- British expatriate academics in the United States