Richard Ewen Borcherds (; born 29 November 1959) is a British mathematician currently working in quantum field theory. He is known for his work in lattices,

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 ...

, and infinite-dimensional

algebra Algebra () is one of the broad areas of mathematics. Roughly speaking, algebra is the study of mathematical symbols and the rules for manipulating these symbols in formulas; it is a unifying thread of almost all of mathematics. Elementary a ...

s, for which 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 1998.

Early life

Borcherds was born in Cape Town, South Africa, but the family moved to

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...

in the United Kingdom when he was six months old.

Education

Borcherds was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...

, where he studied under John Horton Conway.

Career

After receiving his doctorate in 1985, Borcherds has held various alternating positions at Cambridge and the University of California, Berkeley, serving as Morrey Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Berkeley from 1987 to 1988. He was a Royal Society University Research Fellow. From 1996 he held a Royal Society Research Professorship at Cambridge before returning to Berkeley in 1999 as Professor of Mathematics. An interview with Simon Singh for '' The Guardian'', in which Borcherds suggested he might have some traits associated with

Asperger syndrome Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger's, is a former neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavi ...

,Simon Singh
"Interview with Richard Borcherds"
''The Guardian'' (28 August 1998) subsequently led to a chapter about him in a book on autism by

Simon Baron-Cohen Sir Simon Philip Baron-Cohen (born 15 August 1958) is a British clinical psychologist and professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge. He is the director of the university's Autism Research Centre and a Fellow of ...

. (see external links) records conversations with Richard Borcherds and his family. Baron-Cohen concluded that while Borcherds had many autistic traits, he did not merit a formal diagnosis of Asperger syndrome.

Awards and honours

In 1992 Borcherds was one of the first recipients of the EMS prizes awarded at the first

European Congress of Mathematics The European Congress of Mathematics (ECM) is the second largest international conference of the mathematics community, after the International Congresses of Mathematicians (ICM). The ECM are held every four years and are timed precisely betwe ...

in Paris, and in 1994 he was an

invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians This is a list of International Congresses of Mathematicians Plenary and Invited Speakers. Being invited to talk at an International Congress of Mathematicians has been called "the equivalent, in this community, of an induction to a hall of fame." ...

in Zurich. In 1994, he was elected to be a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1998 at the 23rd International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin, Germany he received the

together with Maxim Kontsevich, William Timothy Gowers and Curtis T. McMullen. The award cited him "for his contributions to algebra, the theory of automorphic forms, and mathematical physics, including the introduction of vertex algebras and Borcherds' Lie algebras, the proof of the Conway-Norton moonshine conjecture and the discovery of a new class of automorphic infinite products." In 2012 he became 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, ...

, and in 2014 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.National Academy of Sciences Members and Foreign Associates Elected
, National Academy of Sciences, 29 April 2014.

References

External links