| John Benjamin Friedlander | |
| Citizenship: | Canadian |
| Fields: | Mathematics |
| Workplaces: | Institute for Advanced Study MIT University of Toronto |
| Alma Mater: | University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, Pennsylvania State University |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Sarvadaman Chowla |
| Doctoral Students: | Cem Yıldırım |
| Known For: | Analytic number theory Bombieri–Friedlander–Iwaniec theorem |
| Awards: | Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Jeffery–Williams Prize, Fellow of American Mathematical Society, 2012 |
John Friedlander is a Canadian mathematician specializing in analytic number theory. He received his B.Sc. from the University of Toronto in 1965, an M.A. from the University of Waterloo in 1966, and a Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University in 1972. He was a lecturer at M.I.T. in 1974–76, and has been on the faculty of the University of Toronto since 1977, where he served as Chair during 1987–91. He has also spent several years at the Institute for Advanced Study. In addition to his individual work, he has been notable for his collaborations with other well-known number theorists, including Enrico Bombieri, William Duke, Andrew Granville, and especially Henryk Iwaniec.[1]
In 1997, in joint work with Henryk Iwaniec, Friedlander proved that infinitely many prime numbers can be obtained as the sum of a square and fourth power: .[2] [3] Friedlander and Iwaniec improved Enrico Bombieri's "asymptotic sieve" technique to construct their proof.[4]