Ken Ono

Last updated
Ken Ono
Ken Ono Washington 2009.jpg
Ken Ono in 2009 at the Joint Mathematics Meetings.
Born (1968-03-20) March 20, 1968 (age 56)
Alma mater University of Chicago (BA, MA)
University of California, Los Angeles (PhD)
Scientific career
Fields Mathematics
Institutions University of Virginia [1]
Emory University
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Pennsylvania State University
Doctoral advisor Basil Gordon
Doctoral students Robert Schneider
Other notable students Daniel Kane
Kate Douglass
Website uva.theopenscholar.com/ken-ono

Ken Ono (born March 20, 1968) is an American mathematician with fields of study in number theory. He is the STEM Advisor to the Provost and the Marvin Rosenblum Professor of Mathematics at the University of Virginia.

Contents

Early life and education

Ono was born on March 20, 1968, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. [2] He is the son of mathematician Takashi Ono, who emigrated from Japan to the United States after World War II. Ken Ono was born in the United States as his father returned to the United States from the University of British Columbia in Canada for a position at the University of Pennsylvania. [3]

In the 1980s, Ono attended Towson High School, but he dropped out. He later enrolled at the University of Chicago without a high school diploma. There he raced bicycles, and he was a member of the PepsiMiyata Cycling Team. [4]

He received his BA from the University of Chicago in 1989, where he was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity. [2] He earned his PhD in 1993 from the University of California, Los Angeles, where his advisor was Basil Gordon. [5] [2] Initially he planned to study medicine, but later switched to mathematics. He attributes his interest in mathematics to his father. [6]

Career

Ono worked as an instructor at Woodbury University from 1991 to 1993, as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Georgia from 1993 to 1994, and as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1994 to 1995. [2] He was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study from 1995 to 1997. [2]

Ono worked at Pennsylvania State University from 1997 to 2000 as an assistant professor and then as the Louis A. Martarano Professor of Mathematics. [2] He moved to the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an associate professor in 1999, and later became the Solle P. and Margaret Manasse Professor of Letters and Science from 2004 to 2011 and as the Hilldale Professor of Mathematics from 2008 to 2011. [2] He was the Candler Professor of Mathematics at Emory University from 2010 to 2019. [2] In 2019, Ono became the Thomas Jefferson Professor of Mathematics at the University of Virginia, and in Fall 2021 he was named the Marvin Rosenblum Professor of Mathematics and the chairman of the Department of Mathematics. [7] [2] He ended his term as chairman in Fall 2022 to become the STEM Advisor to the Provost at the University of Virginia. [2]

Ono was the Vice President of the American Mathematical Society from 2018 to 2021. [2] He is serving as the section chair for mathematics at the American Association for the Advancement of Science from 2020 to 2023. [2]

Research

In 2000, Ono derived a theory of Ramanujan congruences for the partition function with all prime moduli greater than 3. His paper was published in the Annals of Mathematics . [8] In a joint work with Jan Bruinier, Ono discovered a finite algebraic formula for computing partition numbers. [9]

In 2014, a joint paper by Michael J. Griffin, Ono, and S. Ole Warnaar provided a framework for the Rogers–Ramanujan identities and their arithmetic properties, solving a long-standing mystery stemming from the work of Ramanujan. [10] The findings yield new formulas for algebraic numbers. Their work was ranked 15th among the top 100 stories of 2014 in science by Discover magazine. [11]

In a 2015 joint paper co-authored with John Duncan and Michael Griffin, Ono helped prove the umbral moonshine conjecture. [12] This conjecture was formulated by Miranda Cheng, John Duncan, and Jeff Harvey, and is a generalization of the monstrous moonshine conjecture proved by Richard Borcherds. [12]

In May 2019, Ono published a joint paper (co-authored with Don Zagier and two former students) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on the Riemann Hypothesis. Their work proves a large portion of the Jensen-Polya criterion for the Riemann Hypothesis. [13] However, the Riemann Hypothesis remains unsolved. Their work also establishes the Gaussian Unitary Ensemble random matrix condition in derivative aspect for the derivatives of the Riemann Xi function. [14]

Since 2016, Ono used mathematical analysis and modeling to advise elite competitive swimmers including some of the 2020 and 2024 Olympians. [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21]

Media

Ono wrote, with Amir Aczel as coauthor, an autobiography, emphasizing the inspiration he gained from Ramanujan's mathematical research. [22] [23]

Ono was an Associate Producer and the mathematical consultant for the movie The Man Who Knew Infinity , which starred Jeremy Irons and Dev Patel, based on Ramanujan's biography written by Robert Kanigel. [6]

He starred in a 2022 Super Bowl commercial for Miller Lite beer. [24] He is on the Board of Directors of the Infinity Arts Foundation. [25]

Personal life

From 2012 to 2014, Ono has competed in World Triathlon Cross Championships events while representing the United States. [26]

Honors and awards

Editorial boards

Ono is on the editorial board of several journals: [2]

See also

Related Research Articles

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References

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  9. Kavassalis, Sarah. "Finite formula found for partition numbers". The Language of Bad Physics. Archived from the original on 18 February 2011. Retrieved 1 March 2011.
  10. Griffin, Michael J.; Ono, Ken; Warnaar, S. Ole (2014). "A framework of Rogers–Ramanujan identities and their arithmetic properties". Duke Mathematical Journal. 165 (8). arXiv: 1401.7718 . doi:10.1215/00127094-3449994. S2CID   119616304.
  11. "Mother lode of mathematical identities discovered, Discover". Archived from the original on 2015-01-07. Retrieved 2014-12-27.
  12. 1 2 Duncan, John; Griffin, Michael J.; Ono, Ken (2015). "Proof of the Umbral Moonshine Conjecture". Research in the Mathematical Sciences. 2. arXiv: 1503.01472 . doi: 10.1186/s40687-015-0044-7 . S2CID   43589605.
  13. Griffin, Michael J.; Ono, Ken; Rolen, Larry; Zagier, Don (2019). "Jensen polynomials for the Riemann zeta function and other sequences". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. 116 (23): 11103–11110. arXiv: 1902.07321 . Bibcode:2019PNAS..11611103G. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1902572116 . PMC   6561287 . PMID   31113886.
  14. Bombieri, Enrico (2019). "New progress on the zeta function: From old conjectures to a major breakthrough". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. 116 (23): 11085–11086. Bibcode:2019PNAS..11611085B. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1906804116 . PMC   6561272 . PMID   31123152.
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