Benedict Hyman Gross is an American mathematician who is a professor at the

University of California San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

, the George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Mathematics Emeritus at

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 ...

, and former Dean of Harvard College.Curriculum vitae
from Gross' web site at Harvard, retrieved 2010-04-21. He is known for his work in

number theory Number theory (or arithmetic or higher arithmetic in older usage) is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and integer-valued functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) said, "Ma ...

, particularly the

Gross–Zagier theorem In mathematics, a Heegner point is a point on a modular curve that is the image of a quadratic imaginary point of the upper half-plane. They were defined by Bryan Birch and named after Kurt Heegner, who used similar ideas to prove Gauss's conjectu ...

L-function In mathematics, an ''L''-function is a meromorphic function on the complex plane, associated to one out of several categories of mathematical objects. An ''L''-series is a Dirichlet series, usually convergent on a half-plane, that may giv ...

s of

elliptic curve In mathematics, an elliptic curve is a smooth, projective, algebraic curve of genus one, on which there is a specified point . An elliptic curve is defined over a field and describes points in , the Cartesian product of with itself. I ...

s, which he researched with Don Zagier.

Education and Professional career

Gross graduated from The

Pingry School The Pingry School is a coeducational, independent, college preparatory country day school in New Jersey, with a Lower School (K–5) campus in the Short Hills neighborhood of Millburn, and a Middle (6–8) and Upper School (9–12) campus ...

, a leading independent school in New Jersey, in 1967 as the valedictorian. In 1971, he graduated

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal ...

from Harvard University. He then received an M.Sc. from

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

as a

Marshall Scholar The Marshall Scholarship is a postgraduate scholarship for "intellectually distinguished young Americans ndtheir country's future leaders" to study at any university in the United Kingdom. It is widely considered one of the most prestigious ...

in 1974 before returning to Harvard and completing his Ph.D. in 1978, under

John Tate John Tate may refer to: * John Tate (mathematician) (1925–2019), American mathematician * John Torrence Tate Sr. (1889–1950), American physicist * John Tate (Australian politician) (1895–1977) * John Tate (actor) (1915–1979), Australian a ...

. After holding faculty positions at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

and

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

, Gross became a tenured professor at Harvard in 1985 and remained there subsequently, as Dean of Harvard College from 2003 to 2007. Benedict Gross was the mathematical consultant for the 1980 film ''It's My Turn'' containing the famous scene in which actress

Jill Clayburgh Jill Clayburgh (April 30, 1944 – November 5, 2010) was an American actress known for her work in theater, television, and cinema. She received the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Ac ...

, portraying a mathematics professor, impeccably proves the

snake lemma The snake lemma is a tool used in mathematics, particularly homological algebra, to construct long exact sequences. The snake lemma is valid in every abelian category and is a crucial tool in homological algebra and its applications, for instance ...

Awards and honors

Gross is a 1986 MacArthur Fellow. Gross, Zagier, and Dorian M. Goldfeld won the

Cole Prize The Frank Nelson Cole Prize, or Cole Prize for short, is one of twenty-two prizes awarded to mathematicians by the American Mathematical Society, one for an outstanding contribution to algebra, and the other for an outstanding contribution to numbe ...

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 ...

in 1987 for their work on the

. In 2012 he became a fellow of the

. Gross was elected as a fellow of 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 1992 and as 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 2004. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2017. He was named as a

Harvard University Professor At Harvard University, the title of University Professor is an honor bestowed upon a very small number of its tenured faculty members whose scholarship and other professional work have attained particular distinction and influence. The University ...

from 2011 to 2016 for his distinguished scholarship and professional work.

Major publications

* Gross, Benedict H.; Harris, Joe. Real algebraic curves. Ann. Sci. École Norm. Sup. (4) 14 (1981), no. 2, 157–182. * Gross, Benedict H. Heights and the special values of L-series. Number theory (Montreal, Que., 1985), 115–187, CMS Conf. Proc., 7, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, 1987. * Gross, Benedict H. A tameness criterion for Galois representations associated to modular forms (mod p). Duke Math. J. 61 (1990), no. 2, 445–517. * Gross, Benedict H.; Prasad, Dipendra. On the decomposition of a representation of SOn when restricted to SOn−1. Canad. J. Math. 44 (1992), no. 5, 974–1002. * Gross, Benedict H.; Zagier, Don B. Heegner points and derivatives of L-series. Invent. Math. 84 (1986), no. 2, 225–320. * Gross, B.; Kohnen, W.; Zagier, D. Heegner points and derivatives of L-series. II. Math. Ann. 278 (1987), no. 1-4, 497–562. * Gan, Wee Teck; Gross, Benedict H.; Prasad, Dipendra. Symplectic local root numbers, central critical L values, and restriction problems in the representation theory of classical groups. Sur les conjectures de Gross et Prasad. I. Astérisque No. 346 (2012), 1–109.

References

External links

Benedict Gross's Harvard University homepage
* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Gross, Benedict 1950 births Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Number theorists Harvard University alumni Alumni of the University of Oxford Princeton University faculty Trustees of the Institute for Advanced Study Brown University faculty Harvard University faculty MacArthur Fellows Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Marshall Scholars Members of the American Philosophical Society

Education and Professional career

Awards and honors

Major publications

See also

References

External links