Daniel Mertz Kane (born 1986) is an American mathematician. He is an associate professor with a joint position in the Mathematics Department and the Computer Science and Engineering Department 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 ...
..
Early life and education
Kane was born in
Madison, Wisconsin
Madison is the county seat of Dane County, Wisconsin, Dane County and the capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census the population was 269,840, making it the second-largest city in Wisconsin b ...
oncology
Oncology is a branch of medicine that deals with the study, treatment, diagnosis and prevention of cancer. A medical professional who practices oncology is an ''oncologist''. The name's etymological origin is the Greek word ὄγκος (''ó ...
and of mathematics and computer science, respectively... The article is primarily about a study jointly authored by Kane's parents, but also mentions Kane's IMO results.
He attended Wingra School, a small alternative K-8 school in Madison that focuses on self-guided education. By 3rd grade, he had mastered K through 9th-grade mathematics. Starting at age 13, he took honors math courses at the
University of Wisconsin–Madison
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ...
and did research under the mentorship of
Ken Ono
Ken Ono (born March 20, 1968) is a Japanese-American mathematician who specializes in number theory, especially in integer partitions, modular forms, umbral moonshine, the Riemann Hypothesis and the fields of interest to Srinivasa Ramanujan. ...
while dual enrolled at
Madison West High School
Madison West High School is a comprehensive four-year high school in Madison, Wisconsin, founded in 1930. Its athletics teams compete in the WIAA Big Eight Conference.
Madison West serves students from four municipalities: Madison, the town of Ma ...
. He earned gold medals in the 2002 and 2003
International Mathematical Olympiad
The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is a mathematical olympiad for pre-university students, and is the oldest of the International Science Olympiads. The first IMO was held in Romania in 1959. It has since been held annually, except ...
s. Prior to his 17th birthday, he resolved an open conjecture proposed years earlier by Andrews and Lewis; for this research, he was named Fellow Laureate of the Davidson Institute for Talent Development.
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 a ...
from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...
in 2007 with two bachelor's degrees, one in mathematics with computer science and the other in physics.
While at MIT, Kane was one of four people since 2003 (and one of eight in the history of the competition) to be named a four-time Putnam Fellow in the
William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition
The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, often abbreviated to Putnam Competition, is an annual mathematics competition for undergraduate college students enrolled at institutions of higher learning in the United States and Canada (regard ...
. He also won the 2007
Morgan Prize
:''Distinguish from the De Morgan Medal awarded by the London Mathematical Society.''
The Morgan Prize (full name Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student) is an annual award given to an und ...
and competed as part of the MIT team in the
Mathematical Contest in Modeling
The International Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM) is a multi-day mathematical modelling competition held annually in USA, during the first or second weekend in February, since 1985 by COMAP and sponsored by SIAM and INFORMS. It is distinguis ...
four times, earning the highest score three times and winning the Ben Fusaro Award in 2004, INFORMS Award in 2006, and
SIAM
Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...
Award in 2007. He also won the Machtey Award as an undergraduate in 2005, with Tim Abbott and Paul Valiant, for the best student-authored
paper at the
Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science
The IEEE Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS) is an academic conference in the field of theoretical computer science. FOCS is sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society.
As writes, FOCS and its annual Association for Computing ...
that year, on the complexity of two-player win-loss games.
Kane received his doctorate in mathematics 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 high ...
in 2011; his dissertation, on
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, "Math ...
, was supervised by
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 in ...
Ken Ono
Ken Ono (born March 20, 1968) is a Japanese-American mathematician who specializes in number theory, especially in integer partitions, modular forms, umbral moonshine, the Riemann Hypothesis and the fields of interest to Srinivasa Ramanujan. ...
while in high school;
Erik Demaine
Erik D. Demaine (born February 28, 1981) is a professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former child prodigy.
Early life and education
Demaine was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to artist sculptor Martin ...
, Joseph Gallian, and Cesar Silva while an undergraduate student at MIT; and
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 in ...
,
Benedict Gross
Benedict Hyman Gross is an American mathematician who is a professor at the University of California San Diego, the George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Mathematics Emeritus at Harvard University, and former Dean of Harvard College.Jelani Nelson and David Woodruff won both the IBM Pat Goldberg Memorial and Symposium on Principles of Database Systems (PODS) best paper awardsPODS 2010 program accessed 2015-01-14; for work on an optimal algorithm for the count-distinct problem.