Carl Bernard Pomerance (born 1944 in
Joplin,
Missouri
Missouri (''see #Etymology and pronunciation, pronunciation'') is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it border ...
) is an American
number theorist. He attended college at
Brown University
Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...
and later received his
Ph.D. from
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 ...
in 1972 with a dissertation proving that any odd
perfect number
In number theory, a perfect number is a positive integer that is equal to the sum of its positive proper divisors, that is, divisors excluding the number itself. For instance, 6 has proper divisors 1, 2 and 3, and 1 + 2 + 3 = 6, so 6 is a perfec ...
has at least seven distinct
prime factor
A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that is not a product of two smaller natural numbers. A natural number greater than 1 that is not prime is called a composite number. For example, 5 is prime because the only ways ...
s. He joined the faculty at the
University of Georgia
The University of Georgia (UGA or Georgia) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university with its main campus in Athens, Georgia, United States. Chartered in 1785, it is the oldest public university in th ...
, becoming full professor in 1982. He subsequently worked at
Lucent Technologies
Lucent Technologies, Inc. was an American Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications equipment company headquartered in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was established on September 30, 1996, through the div ...
for a number of years, and then became a
distinguished professor at
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College ( ) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, Dartmouth is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the America ...
.
Contributions
He has over 120 publications, including co-authorship with
Richard Crandall of ''Prime numbers: a computational perspective'' (
Springer-Verlag
Springer Science+Business Media, commonly known as Springer, is a German multinational publishing company of books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities, technical and medical (STM) publishing.
Originally founded in 1842 in ...
, first edition 2001, second edition 2005
), and with
Paul Erdős
Paul Erdős ( ; 26March 191320September 1996) was a Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. pursued and proposed problems in discrete mathematics, g ...
.
He is the inventor of one of the
integer factorization
In mathematics, integer factorization is the decomposition of a positive integer into a product of integers. Every positive integer greater than 1 is either the product of two or more integer factors greater than 1, in which case it is a comp ...
methods, the
quadratic sieve algorithm, which was used in 1994 for the factorization of
RSA-129. He is also one of the discoverers of the
Adleman–Pomerance–Rumely primality test.
Awards and honors
He has won many teaching and research awards, including the
Chauvenet Prize in 1985,
the
Deborah and Franklin Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics in 1997,
and the
Levi L. Conant Prize in 2001 for "A Tale of Two Sieves".
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, ...
. He also became the
John G. Kemeny Parents Professor of Mathematics in the same year.
See also
*
Carmichael numbers
*
Ruth–Aaron pair
References
External links
Home page2001 Conant Prize an article in the
Bulletin of the AMS, vol 48:4 (2001), 418–419.
1944 births
20th-century American mathematicians
21st-century American mathematicians
Living people
American number theorists
20th-century American Jews
Brown University alumni
Harvard University alumni
Dartmouth College faculty
University of Georgia faculty
Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
Mathematicians from Missouri
21st-century American Jews
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