Nina Claire Snaith is a British mathematician at the

University of Bristol The University of Bristol is a public university, public research university in Bristol, England. It received its royal charter in 1909, although it can trace its roots to a Merchant Venturers' school founded in 1595 and University College, Br ...

working in

random matrix theory In probability theory and mathematical physics, a random matrix is a matrix-valued random variable—that is, a matrix in which some or all of its entries are sampled randomly from a probability distribution. Random matrix theory (RMT) is the s ...

and

quantum chaos Quantum chaos is a branch of physics focused on how chaotic classical dynamical systems can be described in terms of quantum theory. The primary question that quantum chaos seeks to answer is: "What is the relationship between quantum mechanics ...

Education

Snaith was educated at the

where she received her PhD in 2000 for research supervised by

Jonathan Keating Jonathan Peter Keating (born 20 September 1963) is a British mathematician. As of September 2019, he is the Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and from 2012 to 2019 was the Henry Overton Wills Professor of Math ...

Career and research

In 1998, Snaith and her then adviser

conjectured a value for the leading coefficient of the asymptotics of the moments of the

Riemann zeta function The Riemann zeta function or Euler–Riemann zeta function, denoted by the Greek letter (zeta), is a mathematical function of a complex variable defined as \zeta(s) = \sum_^\infty \frac = \frac + \frac + \frac + \cdots for and its analytic c ...

. Keating and Snaith's guessed value for the constant was based on random-matrix theory, following a trend that started with

Montgomery's pair correlation conjecture In mathematics, Montgomery's pair correlation conjecture is a conjecture made by that the pair correlation between pairs of zeros of the Riemann zeta function (normalized to have unit average spacing) is :1-\left(\frac\right)^, which, as Freeman ...

. Keating's and Snaith's work extended works by Brian Conrey, Ghosh, and Gonek, also conjectural, based on number theoretic

heuristic A heuristic or heuristic technique (''problem solving'', '' mental shortcut'', ''rule of thumb'') is any approach to problem solving that employs a pragmatic method that is not fully optimized, perfected, or rationalized, but is nevertheless ...

s; Conrey, Farmer, Keating, Rubinstein, and Snaith later conjectured the lower terms in the asymptotics of the moments. Snaith's work appeared in her doctoral thesis ''Random Matrix Theory and zeta functions''. Snaith is currently Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Bristol.

Awards and honours

In 2008, Snaith was awarded the London Mathematical Society's

Whitehead Prize The Whitehead Prize is awarded yearly by the London Mathematical Society to multiple mathematicians working in the United Kingdom who are at an early stage of their career. The prize is named in memory of homotopy theory pioneer J. H. C. Whitehe ...

. In 2014, she delivered the annual

Hanna Neumann Johanna (Hanna) Neumann (née von Caemmerer; 12 February 1914 – 14 November 1971) was a German-born mathematician who worked on group theory. Biography Neumann was born on 12 February 1914 in Lankwitz, Steglitz-Zehlendorf (today a distri ...

Lecture to honour the achievements of women in mathematics.

Personal life

Snaith is the daughter of mathematician and sister of mathematician and musician

Dan Snaith Daniel Victor Snaith (born 29 March 1978) is a Canadian composer, musician, and recording artist. He has released 11 studio albums since 2000 and has recorded and performed under the stage names Caribou, Manitoba, and Daphni. His Caribou album ' ...

, mostly known by his artistic names Manitoba, Caribou, and Daphni.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Snaith, Nina 20th-century British mathematicians 21st-century British mathematicians 21st-century British women mathematicians Alumni of the University of Bristol Academics of the University of Bristol Living people Canadian mathematicians Year of birth missing (living people) Whitehead Prize winners 20th-century British women mathematicians