Cristian Dumitru Popescu (born 1964) is a Romanian-American mathematician at the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Es ...

. His research interests are in

algebraic number theory Algebraic number theory is a branch of number theory that uses the techniques of abstract algebra to study the integers, rational numbers, and their generalizations. Number-theoretic questions are expressed in terms of properties of algebraic ob ...

, and in particular, in special values of L-functions.

Education and career

The son of historian Dumitru Micu Popescu and biologist Rodica Jerișteanu, Popescu was born in 1964 in Novaci, Gorj County. After completing his undergraduate studies at the Faculty of Mathematics of the University of Bucharest, he obtained his Ph.D. from the

Ohio State University The Ohio State University (Ohio State or OSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio, United States. A member of the University System of Ohio, it was founded in 1870. It is one ...

in 1996, with thesis "On a refined Stark conjecture for function fields" written under the direction of Karl Rubin. He became a professor at

Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...

, after which he moved to his current position as a professor at UC San Diego.

Research contributions

Popescu formulated and proved function field versions of the Gras conjectures and Rubin's integral refinement of the abelian Stark conjectures. He has also made important contributions to the Stark conjectures over number fields, formulating an alternative to Rubin's refinement, known as Popescu's conjecture. Although slightly weaker than Rubin's conjecture, it has the advantage that it can presently be shown to remain true under raising the base field or lowering the top field of the extension. Popescu and Cornelius Greither formulated equivariant versions of Iwasawa's main conjecture over function fields and number fields, proving unconditionally the function field version and conditionally the number field version. These conjectures have important implications for the Brumer–Stark conjecture, the Coates-Sinnott conjecture and Gross' conjecture on special values of L-functions.

Recognition

Popescu was awarded the Simion Stoilow Prize by the Romanian Academy in 2002. In 2015-2016, he was a Simons Fellow at Harvard University. He was elected to the 2021 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, meetings, ...

"for contributions to number theory and arithmetic geometry". He is an honorary member of the Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy.

References

External links

*
Home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Popescu, Cristian 1964 births People from Gorj County Living people 20th-century Romanian mathematicians 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century Romanian mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Romanian emigrants to the United States University of Bucharest alumni Ohio State University alumni Johns Hopkins University faculty University of California, San Diego faculty Number theorists Fellows of the American Mathematical Society