Jean, Baron Bourgain (; – ) was a Belgian mathematician. He was awarded the

Fields Medal The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years. The name of the award h ...

in 1994 in recognition of his work on several core topics of

mathematical analysis Analysis is the branch of mathematics dealing with continuous functions, limits, and related theories, such as differentiation, integration, measure, infinite sequences, series, and analytic functions. These theories are usually studied ...

such as the geometry of

Banach space In mathematics, more specifically in functional analysis, a Banach space (pronounced ) is a complete normed vector space. Thus, a Banach space is a vector space with a metric that allows the computation of vector length and distance between vect ...

s, harmonic analysis, ergodic theory and nonlinear partial differential equations from mathematical physics.

Biography

Bourgain received his PhD from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 1977. He was a faculty member at the

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Universit ...

and, from 1985 until 1995, professor at

Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques The Institut des hautes études scientifiques (IHÉS; English: Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies) is a French research institute supporting advanced research in mathematics and theoretical physics. It is located in Bures-sur-Yvette, jus ...

Bures-sur-Yvette Bures-sur-Yvette (, literally ''Bures on Yvette'') is a commune in the Essonne department in Île-de-France in northern France. Geography Bures-sur-Yvette is located in the Vallée de Chevreuse on the river Yvette, along which the RER lin ...

in France, at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey from 1994 until 2018. He was an editor for the ''

Annals of Mathematics The ''Annals of Mathematics'' is a mathematical journal published every two months by Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study. History The journal was established as ''The Analyst'' in 1874 and with Joel E. Hendricks as the ...

''. From 2012 to 2014, he was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley. His research work included several areas of

such as the geometry of

s, harmonic analysis,

analytic number theory In 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 Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet's 1837 introduction of Diri ...

, combinatorics, ergodic theory, partial differential equations and spectral theory, and later also

group theory In 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 ...

. In 2000, Bourgain connected the

Kakeya problem In mathematics, a Kakeya set, or Besicovitch set, is a set of points in Euclidean space which contains a unit line segment in every direction. For instance, a disk of radius 1/2 in the Euclidean plane, or a ball of radius 1/2 in three-dimensional ...

arithmetic combinatorics In mathematics, arithmetic combinatorics is a field in the intersection of number theory, combinatorics, ergodic theory and harmonic analysis. Scope Arithmetic combinatorics is about combinatorial estimates associated with arithmetic operations ( ...

. As a researcher, he was the author or coauthor of more than 500 articles. Bourgain was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in late 2014. He died of it on 22 December 2018 at a hospital in Bonheiden, Belgium.

Awards and recognition

Bourgain received several awards during his career, the most notable being the

in 1994. In 2009 Bourgain was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 2010, he received the Shaw Prize in Mathematics. In 2012, he and Terence Tao received the

Crafoord Prize The Crafoord Prize is an annual science prize established in 1980 by Holger Crafoord, a Swedish industrialist, and his wife Anna-Greta Crafoord. The Prize is awarded in partnership between the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Crafoord Foun ...

in Mathematics from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 2015, he was made a baron by king Philippe of Belgium. In 2016, he received the 2017 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics. In 2017, he received the 2018 Leroy P. Steele Prizes.

Selected publications

Articles

* (See

and martingale.) * * * * * * * * * * (See Sobolev space.) * * * * (See

Lindelöf hypothesis In mathematics, the Lindelöf hypothesis is a conjecture by Finnish mathematician Ernst Leonard Lindelöf (see ) about the rate of growth of the Riemann zeta function on the critical line. This hypothesis is implied by the Riemann hypothesis. It s ...

Books

* * * (Bourgain's research on nonlinear dispersive equations was, according to Carlos Kenig, "deep and influential".) * *

References

External links

MathSciNet: "Items authored by Bourgain, Jean."
* * * * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Bourgain, Jean 1954 births 2018 deaths Fields Medalists Members of the French Academy of Sciences Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences Functional analysts Mathematical analysts Institute for Advanced Study faculty University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty 20th-century Belgian mathematicians Belgian mathematicians Vrije Universiteit Brussel alumni