Lillian Beatrix Pierce is a mathematician whose research connects

number theory Number theory is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic functions. Number theorists study prime numbers as well as the properties of mathematical objects constructed from integers (for example ...

with

harmonic analysis Harmonic analysis is a branch of mathematics concerned with investigating the connections between a function and its representation in frequency. The frequency representation is found by using the Fourier transform for functions on unbounded do ...

. She is a professor of mathematics at

Duke University Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...

Early life and education

Pierce was

home-schooled Homeschooling or home schooling (American English), also known as home education or elective home education (EHE) (British English), is the education of school-aged children at home or a variety of places other than a school. Usually conducted ...

Fallbrook, California Fallbrook is a census-designated place in northern San Diego County, California. It had a population of 32,267 at the 2020 census. Fallbrook is immediately east of the U.S. Marine Corps' Camp Pendleton. It is known for its avocado groves and c ...

and began playing the

violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...

at age four. By age 11 she began performing professionally as a violinist. As a teenager, she also started taking classes at a local

community college A community college is a type of undergraduate higher education institution, generally leading to an associate degree, certificate, or diploma. The term can have different meanings in different countries: many community colleges have an open enr ...

, accumulating so many units that some of the universities she applied to refused to consider her for freshman admission. She entered

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

majoring in mathematics but intending to pursue an

MD–PhD The Doctor of Medicine–Doctor of Philosophy (MD–PhD) is a dual doctoral program for physician–scientists, combining the professional training of the Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree with the research program of the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph ...

program; under the influence of faculty mentor and undergraduate thesis supervisor

Elias M. Stein Elias Menachem Stein (January 13, 1931 – December 23, 2018) was an American mathematician who was a leading figure in the field of harmonic analysis. He was the Albert Baldwin Dod Professor of Mathematics, Emeritus, at Princeton University, wh ...

, her interests shifted towards pure mathematics. As an undergraduate, she also became an intern at the

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...

. She was Princeton's 2002

valedictorian Valedictorian is an academic title for the class rank, highest-performing student of a graduation, graduating class of an academic institution in the United States. The valedictorian is generally determined by an academic institution's grade poin ...

and became a

Rhodes Scholar The Rhodes Scholarship is an international Postgraduate education, postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford in Oxford, United Kingdom. The scholarship is open to people from all backgrounds around the world. Esta ...

, repeating two accomplishments of her brother Niles Pierce from nine years earlier. She earned a master's degree at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

in 2004. Returning to Princeton for doctoral study in mathematics, she completed her Ph.D. in 2009. Her dissertation, ''Discrete Analogues in Harmonic Analysis'', was supervised by Stein.

Career

After postdoctoral studies with

Roger Heath-Brown David Rodney "Roger" Heath-Brown is a British mathematician working in the field of analytic number theory. Education He was an undergraduate and graduate student of Trinity College, Cambridge; his research supervisor was Alan Baker. Career ...

at Oxford and at the

Hausdorff Center for Mathematics The Hausdorff Center for Mathematics (HCM) is a research center in Bonn, formed by the four mathematical institutes of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn (Mathematical Institute, Institute for Applied Mathematics, Institute for Nume ...

in Bonn, Germany, she became an assistant professor at Duke in 2014 and is now a full professor.

Research

Pierce was one of the first mathematicians to prove nontrivial

upper bound In mathematics, particularly in order theory, an upper bound or majorant of a subset of some preordered set is an element of that is every element of . Dually, a lower bound or minorant of is defined to be an element of that is less ...

s on the number of elements of finite order in an

ideal class group In mathematics, the ideal class group (or class group) of an algebraic number field K is the quotient group J_K/P_K where J_K is the group of fractional ideals of the ring of integers of K, and P_K is its subgroup of principal ideals. The ...

Awards and honors

Pierce won the 2018

Sadosky Prize The AWM–Sadosky Prize in Analysis is a prize given every other year by the Association for Women in Mathematics to an outstanding young female researcher in mathematical analysis. It was established in 2012, and is named after Cora Sadosky, a ...

for research that "spans and connects a broad spectrum of problems ranging from

character sum In mathematics, a character sum is a sum \sum \chi(n) of values of a Dirichlet character χ ''modulo'' ''N'', taken over a given range of values of ''n''. Such sums are basic in a number of questions, for example in the distribution of quadratic re ...

s in number theory to

singular integral operators In mathematics, singular integrals are central to harmonic analysis and are intimately connected with the study of partial differential equations. Broadly speaking a singular integral is an integral operator : T(f)(x) = \int K(x,y)f(y) \, dy, wh ...

in Euclidean spaces" including in particular "a polynomial Carleson theorem for manifolds". She received the 2019

Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers The Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) is the highest honor bestowed by the United States federal government on outstanding scientists and engineers in the early stages of their independent research careers. T ...

. She was elected a

Fellow of the American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

in the class of 2021 "for contributions to number theory and harmonic analysis". The

Association for Women in Mathematics The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) is a professional society whose mission is to encourage women and girls to study and to have active careers in the mathematical sciences, and to promote equal opportunity for and the equal treatment o ...

named her to their 2025 Class of AWM Fellows.

Personal life

Her husband, Tobias Overath, also works at Duke as a neuroscientist.

References

External links

Home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pierce, Lillian Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century American mathematicians American women violinists Princeton University alumni American Rhodes Scholars Alumni of the University of Oxford Duke University faculty 21st-century American women mathematicians 21st-century American violinists 21st-century American women musicians Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Fellows of the Association for Women in Mathematics Recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers