Michael Howard Harris (born 1954) is an American mathematician and professor of mathematics at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

who specializes in number theory and representation theory. He made notable contributions to the

Langlands program In representation theory and algebraic number theory, the Langlands program is a web of far-reaching and influential conjectures about connections between number theory and geometry. Proposed by , it seeks to relate Galois groups in algebraic num ...

, for which he (alongside Richard Taylor) won the 2007

Clay Research Award __NOTOC__ The Clay Research Award is an annual award given by the Oxford-based Clay Mathematics Institute to mathematicians to recognize their achievement in mathematical research. The following mathematicians have received the award: {, class=" ...

. In particular, he (jointly with Taylor) proved the local Langlands conjecture for GL(''n'') over a ''p''-adic

local field In mathematics, a field ''K'' is called a (non-Archimedean) local field if it is complete with respect to a topology induced by a discrete valuation ''v'' and if its residue field ''k'' is finite. Equivalently, a local field is a locally compact ...

, and he was part of the team that proved the

Sato–Tate conjecture In mathematics, the Sato–Tate conjecture is a statistical statement about the family of elliptic curves ''Ep'' obtained from an elliptic curve ''E'' over the rational numbers by reduction modulo almost all prime numbers ''p''. Mikio Sato and J ...

. He was elected a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...

in 2022.

Education and career

Harris attained his doctorate from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

in 1977, under supervision of

Barry Mazur Barry Charles Mazur (; born December 19, 1937) is an American mathematician and the Gerhard Gade University Professor at Harvard University. His contributions to mathematics include his contributions to Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem ...

. His thesis, entitled "On ''p''-Adic Representations Arising from Descent on Abelian Varieties", was later published in ''

Compositio Mathematica ''Compositio Mathematica'' is a monthly peer-reviewed mathematics journal established by L.E.J. Brouwer in 1935. It is owned by the Foundation Compositio Mathematica, and since 2004 it has been published on behalf of the Foundation by the London M ...

''. Before arriving at Columbia University he held permanent positions at

Brandeis University , mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts" , established = , type = Private research university , accreditation = NECHE , president = Ronald D. Liebowitz , p ...

and Université Paris-Diderot; he has also held extended visiting positions at Bethlehem University, the

Steklov Institute of Mathematics Steklov Institute of Mathematics or Steklov Mathematical Institute (russian: Математический институт имени В.А.Стеклова) is a premier research institute based in Moscow, specialized in mathematics, and a part ...

, and the Institut des Hautes-Études Scientifiques.

Works

* *

Recognition

He was included in the 2019 class of fellows 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, meeting ...

"for contributions to arithmetic geometry, particularly the theory of automorphic forms, L-functions and motives". He was elected to the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of Humanities, Letters, Law, and Sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europea ...

in 2016 and to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

in 2019.

Notes

References

External links

Michael Harris's web page
* * * * 1954 births Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Number theorists Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Clay Research Award recipients Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars Columbia University faculty Fellows of the American Mathematical Society People from Philadelphia Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences {{US-mathematician-stub