Michael Jeffrey Larsen is an American

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

, a distinguished professor of mathematics at

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, IUB, or Indiana) is a public university, public research university in Bloomington, Indiana, United States. It is the flagship university, flagship campus of Indiana Univer ...

..Michael J. Larsen
IU News Room, March 30, 2011.

Academic biography

In high school, Larsen tied with four other competitors for the top score in the 1977

International Mathematical Olympiad The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is a mathematical olympiad for pre-university students, and is the oldest of the International Science Olympiads. It is widely regarded as the most prestigious mathematical competition in the wor ...

Belgrade Belgrade is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers and at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin, Pannonian Plain and the Balkan Peninsula. T ...

, winning a gold medal. As an undergraduate mathematics student at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, Larsen became a

Putnam Fellow The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, often abbreviated to Putnam Competition, is an annual mathematics competition for undergraduate college students enrolled at institutions of higher learning in the United States and Canada (regar ...

in 1981 and 1983. He graduated from Harvard in 1984,Member biography
Indiana U. Alliance of Distinguished and Titled Professors, retrieved 2012-08-16. and earned his Ph.D. from

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 ...

in 1988, under the supervision of

Gerd Faltings Gerd Faltings (; born 28 July 1954) is a German mathematician known for his work in arithmetic geometry. Education From 1972 to 1978, Faltings studied mathematics and physics at the University of Münster. Interrupted by 15 months of obligatory ...

. After working at the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry located in Princeton, New Jersey. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholars, including Albert Ein ...

he joined the faculty of the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

in 1990, and then moved to the

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou or MU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri, United States. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus Univers ...

in 1997. He joined the Indiana University faculty in 2001. His wife Ayelet Lindenstrauss (

Elon Lindenstrauss Elon Lindenstrauss (; born August 1, 1970) is an Israeli mathematician, and a winner of the 2010 Fields Medal. Since 2004, he has been a professor at Princeton University. In 2009, he was appointed as a Professor at the Einstein Institute of Mat ...

' sister) is also a mathematician and Indiana University professor. Their son

Daniel Daniel commonly refers to: * Daniel (given name), a masculine given name and a surname * List of people named Daniel * List of people with surname Daniel * Daniel (biblical figure) * Book of Daniel, a biblical apocalypse, "an account of the acti ...

at age 13 became the youngest person to publish a crossword in the ''New York Times''. In 2022, Daniel published a discovery about

Carmichael numbers In number theory, a Carmichael number is a composite number which in modular arithmetic satisfies the congruence relation: : b^n\equiv b\pmod for all integers . The relation may also be expressed in the form: : b^\equiv 1\pmod for all integers b ...

Research

Larsen is known for his research in

arithmetic algebraic geometry In mathematics, arithmetic geometry is roughly the application of techniques from algebraic geometry to problems in number theory. Arithmetic geometry is centered around Diophantine geometry, the study of rational points of algebraic varieties. ...

combinatorial group theory In mathematics, combinatorial group theory is the theory of free groups, and the concept of a presentation of a group by generators and relations. It is much used in geometric topology, the fundamental group of a simplicial complex having in a na ...

combinatorics Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and as an end to obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many ...

, and

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 ...

. He has written highly cited papers on

domino tiling In geometry, a domino tiling of a region in the Euclidean plane is a tessellation of the region by domino (mathematics), dominoes, shapes formed by the union of two unit squares meeting edge-to-edge. Equivalently, it is a matching (graph theory), ...

Aztec diamond In combinatorics, combinatorial mathematics, an Aztec diamond of order ''n'' consists of all squares of a square lattice whose centers (''x'',''y'') satisfy , ''x'', + , ''y'', ≤ ''n''. Here ''n'' is a fixed integer, and the square lattice co ...

topological Topology (from the Greek words , and ) is the branch of mathematics concerned with the properties of a geometric object that are preserved under continuous deformations, such as stretching, twisting, crumpling, and bending; that is, wit ...

quantum computing A quantum computer is a computer that exploits quantum mechanical phenomena. On small scales, physical matter exhibits properties of wave-particle duality, both particles and waves, and quantum computing takes advantage of this behavior using s ...

, and on the

representation theory Representation theory is a branch of mathematics that studies abstract algebra, abstract algebraic structures by ''representing'' their element (set theory), elements as linear transformations of vector spaces, and studies Module (mathematics), ...

braid group In mathematics, the braid group on strands (denoted B_n), also known as the Artin braid group, is the group whose elements are equivalence classes of Braid theory, -braids (e.g. under ambient isotopy), and whose group operation is composition of ...

Awards and honors

In 2013 he became a

fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

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, ...

, for "contributions to group theory, number theory, topology, and algebraic geometry".2014 Class of the Fellows of the AMS

, retrieved 2013-11-04. He received the E. H. Moore Research Article Prize of the AMS in 2013 (jointly with Richard Pink).

Selected publications

*. *. *. *.

References

External links

Home page
at Indiana University {{DEFAULTSORT:Larsen, Michael J. Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Putnam Fellows Harvard University alumni Princeton University alumni University of Pennsylvania faculty University of Missouri faculty Indiana University faculty Fellows of the American Mathematical Society International Mathematical Olympiad participants