Kannan Soundararajan (born December 27, 1973) is an

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

n-born 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 ...

and a professor of mathematics at

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 ...

. Before moving to Stanford in 2006, he was a faculty member at

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

, where he had also pursued his undergraduate studies. His main research interest is in

analytic number theory In mathematics, analytic number theory is a branch of number theory that uses methods from mathematical analysis to solve problems about the integers. It is often said to have begun with Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet's 1837 introduction of Dir ...

, particularly in the subfields of automorphic

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 gi ...

s, and multiplicative number theory.

Early life

Soundararajan grew up in

Chennai Chennai, also known as Madras (List of renamed places in India#Tamil Nadu, its official name until 1996), is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Tamil Nadu by population, largest city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost states and ...

and was a student at Padma Seshadri High School in Nungambakkam in Chennai. In 1989, he attended the Research Science Institute. He represented India at the

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. It is widely regarded as the most prestigious mathematical competition in the wor ...

in 1991 and won a Silver Medal.

Education

Soundararajan joined the

, Ann Arbor, in 1991 for undergraduate studies, and graduated with highest honours in 1995. Soundararajan won the inaugural Morgan Prize in 1995 for his work in

while an undergraduate at the

, where he later served as professor. He joined

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

in 1995 and did his Ph.D under the guidance of Professor Peter Sarnak.

Career

After his Ph.D. he received the first five-year fellowship from the American Institute of Mathematics, and held positions at Princeton University, the Institute for Advanced Study, and the University of Michigan. He moved to Stanford University in 2006 where he is, as of November 2022, the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Mathematics. He provided a proof of a conjecture of Ron Graham in combinatorial number theory jointly with Ramachandran Balasubramanian. He made contributions in settling the arithmetic Quantum Unique Ergodicity conjecture for Maass wave forms and

modular forms In mathematics, a modular form is a holomorphic function on the Upper half-plane#Complex plane, complex upper half-plane, \mathcal, that roughly satisfies a functional equation with respect to the Group action (mathematics), group action of the ...

Awards

He received the Salem Prize in 2003 "for contributions to the area of

Dirichlet L-function In mathematics, a Dirichlet L-series is a function of the form :L(s,\chi) = \sum_^\infty \frac. where \chi is a Dirichlet character and s a complex variable with real part greater than 1 . It is a special case of a Dirichlet series. By anal ...

s and related character sums". In 2005, he won the $10,000 SASTRA Ramanujan Prize, shared with

Manjul Bhargava Manjul Bhargava (born 8 August 1974) is a Canadian-American mathematician. He is the Brandon Fradd, Class of 1983, Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University, the Stieltjes Professor of Number Theory at Leiden University, and also holds A ...

, awarded by SASTRA in

Thanjavur Thanjavur (), also known as Thanjai, previously known as Tanjore, Pletcher 2010, p. 195 is a city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is the 12th biggest city in Tamil Nadu. Thanjavur is an important center of southern Indian religion, art ...

, for his outstanding contributions to

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 ...

. In 2011, he was awarded the Infosys science foundation prize. He was awarded the Ostrowski prize in 2011, shared with Ib Madsen and David Preiss, for a cornucopia of fundamental results in the last five years to go along with his earlier work. He gave an invited talk at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2010, on the topic of "Number Theory". In July 2017, Soundararajan was a plenary lecturer in the Mathematical Congress of the Americas. He was elected to the 2018 class of

fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

s 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, ...

. Kannan Soundararajan was invited as a plenary speaker of the 2022

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the IMU Abacus Medal (known before ...

, scheduled to take place in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

, but moved to Helsinki and online because of the

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

Selected publications

* R. Holowinsky and K. Soundararajan, "Mass equidistribution for Hecke eigenforms,"
arXiv:0809.1636v1
*K. Soundararajan, "Nonvanishing of quadratic Dirichlet L-functions at s=1/2
arXiv:math/9902163v2
*K. Soundararajan, "Moments of the Riemann zeta function" https://annals.math.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/annals-v170-n2-p17-p.pdf

References

External links

Homepage at Stanford UniversityMaking Waves
* *
Infosys Prize 2011

Videos of Kannan Soundararajan
in the AV-Portal of the German National Library of Science and Technology {{DEFAULTSORT:Soundararajan, Kannan 1973 births Living people Indian emigrants to the United States Indian number theorists University of Michigan alumni Stanford University Department of Mathematics faculty 21st-century American mathematicians Recipients of the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize International Mathematical Olympiad participants University of Michigan faculty 21st-century Indian mathematicians Simons Investigator Fellows of the American Mathematical Society People from Chennai American people of Indian Tamil descent Tamil people