Kevin Mark Buzzard (born 21 September 1968) is a British mathematician and currently a professor of pure mathematics at Imperial College London. He specialises in arithmetic geometry and the Langlands program.[1]

Kevin Buzzard
Buzzard in 2007
Born (1968-09-21) 21 September 1968 (age 56)
Alma materTrinity College, Cambridge
AwardsWhitehead Prize (2002)
Senior Berwick Prize (2008)
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsImperial College London
Harvard University
Thesis The Levels of Modular Representations  (1995)
Doctoral advisorRichard Taylor
Doctoral studentsDaniel Snaith
Toby Gee

Biography

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While attending the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe he competed in the International Mathematical Olympiad, where he won a bronze medal in 1986 and a gold medal with a perfect score in 1987.[2]

He obtained a B.A. degree in Mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was Senior Wrangler in 1990, and a C.A.S.M. in 1991.[3] He then received his Ph.D. under the supervision of Richard Taylor with a thesis titled The levels of modular representations in 1995.[3][4]

He took a lectureship at Imperial College London in 1998, a readership in 2002, and was appointed to a professorship in 2004. From October to December 2002 he held a visiting professorship at Harvard University, having previously worked at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (1995), the University of California Berkeley (1996-7), and the Institute Henri Poincaré in Paris (2000).[3]

He was awarded a Whitehead Prize by the London Mathematical Society in 2002 for "his distinguished work in number theory",[5] and the Senior Berwick Prize in 2008.[6]

In 2017, he launched an ongoing formalization project and blog involving the Lean theorem prover[7] and has since promoted the use of computer proof assistants in future mathematics research. He gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2022 on the topic.[8]

He was the PhD supervisor to musician Dan Snaith,[9] also known as Caribou, who received a PhD in mathematics from Imperial College London for his work on Overconvergent Siegel Modular Symbols.[10]

In 2024, Buzzard and collaborators were handed a five-year ESPRC grant to begin formalising Fermat's Last Theorem in Lean.[11]

References

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  1. ^ Buzzard, Kevin (8 May 2019). "What is the Xena project?". Xena Project. Retrieved 1 July 2022.
  2. ^ "Kevin Mark Buzzard". Participants. International Mathematical Olympiad. Retrieved 1 April 2024.
  3. ^ a b c "Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). Kevin Buzzard. 8 November 2012. Retrieved 14 February 2024.
  4. ^ Kevin Buzzard at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  5. ^ "Citation for Kevin Mark Buzzard". Archived from the original on 3 October 2009. Retrieved 2 February 2007.
  6. ^ "LMS Prizewinners". Archived from the original on 4 August 2007.
  7. ^ Buzzard, Kevin (5 September 2019). "The future of mathematics?" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 August 2021. Retrieved 1 July 2022.
  8. ^ Kevin Buzzard (9 July 2022). "The rise of formalism in mathematics". YouTube.
  9. ^ "Kevin Buzzard's research notes". Retrieved 16 July 2022.
  10. ^ Daniel Snaith. "Overconvergent Siegel Modular Symbols" (PDF). 2.imperial.acuk. Retrieved 16 July 2022.
  11. ^ "EP/Y022904/1: 'Formalising Fermat'". ESPRC. Retrieved 25 August 2024.
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