In representation theory and algebraic number theory, the Langlands program is a web of far-reaching and influential conjectures about connections between number theory and geometry. Proposed by Robert Langlands, it seeks to relate Galois groups in algebraic number theory to automorphic forms and representation theory of algebraic groups over local fields and adeles. Widely seen as the single biggest project in modern mathematical research, the Langlands program has been described by Edward Frenkel as "a kind of grand unified theory of mathematics."
The modularity theorem states that elliptic curves over the field of rational numbers are related to modular forms. Andrew Wiles proved the modularity theorem for semistable elliptic curves, which was enough to imply Fermat's Last Theorem. Later, a series of papers by Wiles's former students Brian Conrad, Fred Diamond and Richard Taylor, culminating in a joint paper with Christophe Breuil, extended Wiles's techniques to prove the full modularity theorem in 2001.
John Henry Coates was an Australian mathematician who was the Sadleirian Professor of Pure Mathematics at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom from 1986 to 2012.
In number theory, Iwasawa theory is the study of objects of arithmetic interest over infinite towers of number fields. It began as a Galois module theory of ideal class groups, initiated by Kenkichi Iwasawa (1959), as part of the theory of cyclotomic fields. In the early 1970s, Barry Mazur considered generalizations of Iwasawa theory to abelian varieties. More recently, Ralph Greenberg has proposed an Iwasawa theory for motives.
In mathematics, the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture describes the set of rational solutions to equations defining an elliptic curve. It is an open problem in the field of number theory and is widely recognized as one of the most challenging mathematical problems. It is named after mathematicians Bryan John Birch and Peter Swinnerton-Dyer, who developed the conjecture during the first half of the 1960s with the help of machine computation. As of 2022, only special cases of the conjecture have been proven.
Don Bernard Zagier is an American-German mathematician whose main area of work is number theory. He is currently one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, Germany. He was a professor at the Collège de France in Paris from 2006 to 2014. Since October 2014, he is also a Distinguished Staff Associate at ICTP.
Shou-Wu Zhang is a Chinese-American mathematician known for his work in number theory and arithmetic geometry. He is currently a Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University.
Bryan John Birch FRS is a British mathematician. His name has been given to the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture.
Manjul Bhargava 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 Adjunct Professorships at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, and the University of Hyderabad. He is known primarily for his contributions to number theory.
In mathematics, a Heegner point is a point on a modular curve that is the image of a quadratic imaginary point of the upper half-plane. They were defined by Bryan Birch and named after Kurt Heegner, who used similar ideas to prove Gauss's conjecture on imaginary quadratic fields of class number one.
In mathematics, elliptic units are certain units of abelian extensions of imaginary quadratic fields constructed using singular values of modular functions, or division values of elliptic functions. They were introduced by Gilles Robert in 1973, and were used by John Coates and Andrew Wiles in their work on the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture. Elliptic units are an analogue for imaginary quadratic fields of cyclotomic units. They form an example of an Euler system.
In number theory, Tunnell's theorem gives a partial resolution to the congruent number problem, and under the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, a full resolution.
In mathematics, the main conjecture of Iwasawa theory is a deep relationship between p-adic L-functions and ideal class groups of cyclotomic fields, proved by Kenkichi Iwasawa for primes satisfying the Kummer–Vandiver conjecture and proved for all primes by Mazur and Wiles (1984). The Herbrand–Ribet theorem and the Gras conjecture are both easy consequences of the main conjecture. There are several generalizations of the main conjecture, to totally real fields, CM fields, elliptic curves, and so on.
In arithmetic geometry, the Tate–Shafarevich groupШ(A/K) of an abelian variety A (or more generally a group scheme) defined over a number field K consists of the elements of the Weil–Châtelet group WC(A/K) = H1(GK, A) that become trivial in all of the completions of K (i.e. the p-adic fields obtained from K, as well as its real and complex completions). Thus, in terms of Galois cohomology, it can be written as
James S. Milne is a New Zealand mathematician working in arithmetic geometry.
Wei Zhang is a Chinese mathematician specializing in number theory. He is currently a Professor of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In mathematics, the rank of an elliptic curve is the rational Mordell–Weil rank of an elliptic curve defined over the field of rational numbers. Mordell's theorem says the group of rational points on an elliptic curve has a finite basis. This means that for any elliptic curve there is a finite subset of the rational points on the curve, from which all further rational points may be generated. If the number of rational points on a curve is infinite then some point in a finite basis must have infinite order. The number of independent basis points with infinite order is the rank of the curve.
Sarah Livia Zerbes is a German algebraic number theorist at ETH Zurich. Her research interests include L-functions, modular forms, p-adic Hodge theory, and Iwasawa theory, and her work has led to new insights towards the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, which predicts the number of rational points on an elliptic curve by the behavior of an associated L-function.
Christopher McLean Skinner is an American mathematician working in number theory and arithmetic aspects of the Langlands program. He specialises in algebraic number theory.
Francesco Damien "Frank" Calegari is a professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago working in number theory and the Langlands program.
