Edray Herber Goins (born June 29, 1972, Los Angeles) is an American

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

. He specializes in

number theory Number theory is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic functions. Number theorists study prime numbers as well as the properties of mathematical objects constructed from integers (for example ...

and

algebraic geometry Algebraic geometry is a branch of mathematics which uses abstract algebraic techniques, mainly from commutative algebra, to solve geometry, geometrical problems. Classically, it studies zero of a function, zeros of multivariate polynomials; th ...

. His interests include

Selmer group In arithmetic geometry, the Selmer group, named in honor of the work of by , is a group constructed from an isogeny of abelian varieties. Selmer group of an isogeny The Selmer group of an abelian variety ''A'' with respect to an isogeny ''f'' ...

s for

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. If the ...

s using

class group In mathematics, the ideal class group (or class group) of an algebraic number field K is the quotient group J_K/P_K where J_K is the group of fractional ideals of the ring of integers of K, and P_K is its subgroup of principal ideals. The class ...

s of

number field In mathematics, an algebraic number field (or simply number field) is an extension field K of the field of rational numbers such that the field extension K / \mathbb has finite degree (and hence is an algebraic field extension). Thus K is a ...

s, Belyi maps and

dessins d'enfant In mathematics, a dessin d'enfant is a type of graph embedding used to study Riemann surfaces and to provide combinatorial invariants for the action of the absolute Galois group of the rational numbers. The name of these embeddings is French for ...

.Edray Herber Goins
Mathematicians of the African Diaspora at the State University of New York at BuffaloProfessor Goins featured speaker at University of Michigan's Dr. Marjorie Lee Browne Colloquium
Department of Mathematics, Purdue University

Early life

Goins was born in Los Angeles in 1972. His mother, Eddi Beatrice Brown, was a teacher. He attended public schools in

South Los Angeles South Los Angeles, also known as South Central Los Angeles or simply South Central, is a region in southwestern Los Angeles County, California, lying mostly within the city limits of Los Angeles, south of Downtown Los Angeles, downtown. It is de ...

and got his BSc in mathematics and physics in 1994 from

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes ...

, where he also received two prizes for mathematics. He completed his PhD in 1999 on “Elliptic Curves and Icosahedral Galois Representations” from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

, under

Daniel Bump Daniel Willis Bump (born 13 May 1952) is a mathematician who is a professor at Stanford University working in representation theory. He is a fellow of the American Mathematical Society since 2015, for "contributions to number theory, representation ...

and

Karl Rubin Karl Cooper Rubin (born January 27, 1956) is an American mathematician at University of California, Irvine as Thorp Professor of Mathematics. Between 1997 and 2006, he was a professor at Stanford, and before that worked at Ohio State University b ...

Career

He served for many years on the faculty of

Purdue University Purdue University is a Public university#United States, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, United States, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded ...

. He has also served as visiting scholar at both the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry located in Princeton, New Jersey. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholars, including Albert Ein ...

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

, and

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

. Goins took a position at

Pomona College Pomona College ( ) is a private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Claremont, California. It was established in 1887 by a group of Congregationalism in the United States, Congregationalists ...

in 2018. His summers have focused on engaging underrepresented students in research in the mathematical sciences. He currently runs the

NSF NSF may stand for: Political organizations *National Socialist Front, a Swedish National Socialist party *NS-Frauenschaft, the women's wing of the former German Nazi party * National Students Federation, a leftist Pakistani students' political g ...

-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) "Pomona Research in Mathematics Experience (PRiME)", a program that Goins started in 2016 at Purdue University under the title "Purdue Research in Mathematics Experience (PRiME)". He is noted for his 2018 essay, "Three Questions: The Journey of One Black Mathematician". He was elected to the 2019 Class of Fellows of the

Association for Women in Mathematics The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) is a professional society whose mission is to encourage women and girls to study and to have active careers in the mathematical sciences, and to promote equal opportunity for and the equal treatment o ...

. From 2015 to 2020, Goins served as president of the

National Association of Mathematicians The National Association of Mathematicians is a professional association for mathematicians in the US, especially African Americans and other minorities. It was founded in 1969.

(NAM).

Mathematicians of the African Diaspora

In 1997 Scott W. Williams of the

University at Buffalo, SUNY The State University of New York at Buffalo (commonly referred to as UB, University at Buffalo, and sometimes SUNY Buffalo) is a public research university in Buffalo and Amherst, New York, United States. The university was founded in 1846 as ...

created the website

Mathematicians of the African Diaspora Mathematicians of the African Diaspora (MAD) is a website created in 1997 by Scott W. Williams of the University at Buffalo, SUNY dedicated to promoting and highlighting the contributions of members of the African diaspora to mathematics, espec ...

(MAD) dedicated to promoting and highlighting the contributions of members of the African diaspora to mathematics, especially contributions to current mathematical research.Mathematicians of the African Diaspora
/ref> Williams retired in 2008 and it was left to others to continue the website he had spent 11 years building. After an initial town hall meeting about the future of the MAD Pages which took place at a Conference for African American Researchers in the Mathematical Sciences (CAARMS), an informal group of mathematicians decided to work together to preserve Williams’ work. In 2015, the National Association of Mathematicians (NAM) formed an ad hoc committee to update the MAD Pages, consisting of Edray Goins as NAM President, Committee Co-Chairs Don King (

Northeastern University Northeastern University (NU or NEU) is a private university, private research university with its main campus in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It was founded by the Boston Young Men's Christian Association in 1898 as an all-male instit ...

) and Asamoah Nkwanta (

Morgan State University Morgan State University (Morgan State or MSU) is a Public university, public historically black colleges and universities, historically black research university in Baltimore, Baltimore, Maryland. It is the largest of Maryland's historically bla ...

), and web developer John Weaver (Varsity Software).

Selected papers

* 2000
A ternary algebra with applications to binary quadratic forms
' Council for African American Researchers in the Mathematical Sciences, Vol. IV (Baltimore, MD, 2000), 7--12, Contemp. Math., 284, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, 2001. * 2001
Artin's conjecture and elliptic curves
' Contemp. Math., 275, 39–51, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, 2001. * 2001
The fractional parts of N/K
' (with M. R. Currie) Council for African American Researchers in the Mathematical Sciences, Vol. III (Baltimore, MD, 1997/Ann Arbor, MI, 1999), 13–31, Contemp. Math., 275, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, 2001. * 2003
Icosahedral Q-Curve Extensions
', Math. Res. Lett. 10 (2003), no. 2-3. * 2007
On Pythagorean quadruplets
' (with Alain Togbe) International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, Vol 35, No 3, 2007, pp 365–374 * 2008
On the Diophantine Equation

x^2 + 2^\alpha5^\alpha13^\alpha = y^n

' (with Florian Luca & Alain Togbé) Algorithmic number theory, pp 430–442, Lecture Notes in Comput. Sci., 5011, Springer, Berlin. * 2009
Palindromes in different bases: A conjecture of J. Ernest Wilkins
'. Integers 9 (2009), A55, 725–734. * 2010
Semi-magic squares and elliptic curves
'. Missouri J. Math. Sci. 22 (2010), no. 2, 102–107. * 2012
Points on hyperbolas at rational distance
' (with Kevin Mugo). Int. J. Number Theory 8 (2012), no. 4, 911–922. * 2013
Branch decomposition heuristics for linear matroids
' (with Jing Ma, Susan Margulies and Illya V.Hicks). Discrete Optim. 10 no. 2, 102–119. (2013) * 2013
Arithmetic progressions on conic sections
' (with Alejandra Alvarado). Int. J. Number Theory 9, no. 6, 1379–1393. (2013) * 2014
On the generalized climbing stairs problem
' (with Talitha M. Washington) Ars Combin. 117 (2014) * 2016
Riordan matrix representations of Euler's constant γ and Euler's number e
' (with Asamoah Nkwanta) International Journal of Combinatorics, 2016

References

External links

Edray Goins's Home page
*
New York Times Profile of Edray Goins

Video Interview with Edray Goins
Meet a Mathematician

{{DEFAULTSORT:Goins, Edray Herber African-American mathematicians American algebraists Purdue University faculty Pomona College faculty California Institute of Technology alumni Fellows of the Association for Women in Mathematics Stanford University alumni 1972 births Living people 21st-century African-American people 20th-century African-American people