Bjorn Poonen Explained

Bjorn Poonen
Birth Date:	27 July 1968
Birth Place:	Boston, Massachusetts
Fields:	Mathematics
Workplaces:	MIT
Alma Mater:	University of California, Berkeley Harvard University
Thesis Title:	The Mordell-Weil theorem, rigidity, and pairings for Drinfeld modules
Thesis Year:	1994
Doctoral Advisor:	Kenneth Alan Ribet

Bjorn Mikhail Poonen (born July 27, 1968, in Boston, Massachusetts) is a mathematician, four-time Putnam Competition winner, and a Distinguished Professor in Science in the Department of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.^[1] His research is primarily in arithmetic geometry, but he has occasionally published in other subjects such as probability^[2] and computer science.^[3] He has edited two books.^{[4] [5]} He is the founding managing editor of the journal Algebra & Number Theory,^[6] and serves also on the editorial boards of ^[7] and the A K Peters Research Notes in Mathematics book series.^[8]

Education

Poonen is a 1985 alumnus of Winchester High School in Winchester, Massachusetts. In 1989, Poonen graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. in Mathematics and Physics, summa cum laude. He then studied under Kenneth Alan Ribet at the University of California, Berkeley, completing a PhD there in 1994.

Academic positions

Poonen held postdoctoral positions at Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and Princeton University and served on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley from 1997 to 2008, before moving to MIT.^[8] He has also held visiting positions at the Isaac Newton Institute (1998 and 2005), the Université Paris-Sud (2001), Harvard (2007), and MIT (2007).^[8]

Major honors and awards

• Joseph L. Doob Prize, 2023^[9]
• Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, 2012.^[10]
• American Academy of Arts and Sciences: elected in 2012^[11]
• Chauvenet Prize: the 2011 winner, for his article "Undecidability in number theory"^[12]
• Miller Research Professorship – University of California Berkeley.
• David and Lucile Packard Fellowship^[13]
• Sloan Research Fellowship^[14]
• William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition: winner in 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1988 (the only other four-time winners since 1938 are Don Coppersmith, Arthur Rubin, Ravi D. Vakil, Gabriel Carroll, Reid W. Barton, Daniel Kane and Brian R. Lawrence).^[15]
• International Mathematical Olympiad: silver medalist in 1985.^[16]
• American High School Mathematics Examination: only participant (out of 380,000) to receive a perfect score in 1985.^[17]

Trivia

• Poonen co-authored a paper entitled "How to spread rumors fast".^[18]

External links

• Personal webpage

Notes and References

1. Web site: Profile . MIT Mathematics . October 14, 2023.
2. Amir Dembo, Qi-Man Shao, Bjorn Poonen, and Ofer Zeitouni, "Random polynomials with few or no real zeros", Journal of the American Mathematical Society 15 (2002), 857–892.
3. Poonen . Bjorn . The Worst Case in Shellsort and Related Algorithms . Journal of Algorithms . Elsevier BV . 15 . 1 . 1993 . 0196-6774 . 10.1006/jagm.1993.1032 . 101–124. 10.1.1.138.295 .
4. Book: Kedlaya . Kiran S. . Poonen . Bjorn . Vakil . Ravi . The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition 1985–2000 . Mathematical Association of America . March 24, 2011 . 978-0-88385-827-1 .
5. Book: Progress in Mathematics . Arithmetic of Higher-Dimensional Algebraic Varieties . Birkhäuser Boston . Boston, MA . 2004 . 226 . 978-1-4612-6471-2 . 0743-1643 . 10.1007/978-0-8176-8170-8 .
6. Web site: Algebra & Number Theory . MSP . May 2, 2005 . October 14, 2023.
7. Web site: Involve . msp.org . May 2, 2007 . October 14, 2023.
8. http://www-math.mit.edu/~poonen/papers/cv.pdf Curriculum vitae
9. Web site: Joseph L. Doob Prize . American Mathematical Society . November 26, 2018 . October 14, 2023.
10. Web site: Fellows of the American Mathematical Society . American Mathematical Society . November 26, 2018 . October 14, 2023.
11. Web site: American Academy of Arts & Sciences. www.amacad.org. October 23, 2016.
12. Web site: Chauvenet Prizes Mathematical Association of America. mathdl.maa.org. October 23, 2016.
13. http://www.cs.virginia.edu/packard/directory/field/mathematics.html Packard fellows in mathematics
14. Notices Amer. Math. Soc. 45, no. 6, (June–July 1998), p. 723.
15. Web site: Putnam Competition Individual and Team Winners Mathematical Association of America. www.maa.org. October 23, 2016.
16. Web site: International Mathematical Olympiad. www.imo-official.org. October 23, 2016.
17. https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20081031153754/http://www.unl.edu/amc/d-publication/d1-pubarchive/2004-5pub/2005-HSsummary.pdf American High School Mathematics Examination results
18. Fan . C. Kenneth . Poonen . Bjorn . Poonen . George . How to Spread Rumors Fast . Mathematics Magazine . Informa UK Limited . 70 . 1 . 1997 . 0025-570X . 10.1080/0025570x.1997.11996496 . 40–42.