Ken Ono | |
---|---|
Born | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US | March 20, 1968
Alma mater | UCLA University of Chicago |
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 |
Website | Homepage |
Ken Ono (born March 20, 1968) is an American mathematician who specializes in number theory, especially in integer partitions, modular forms, umbral moonshine, the Riemann Hypothesis and the fields of interest to Srinivasa Ramanujan. He is the STEM Advisor to the Provost and the Marvin Rosenblum Professor of Mathematics at the University of Virginia.
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. His older brother, immunologist and university president Santa J. Ono, was born while Takashi Ono was in Canada working at the University of British Columbia, but by the time Ken Ono was born the family had returned to the US 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 Pepsi–Miyata 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 at UCLA 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]
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]
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 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 has been using mathematical analysis and modeling to advise elite competitive swimmers including 2020 Tokyo Olympic medalists Claire Curzan, Kate Douglass, Cate DeLoof, Paige Madden, Alex Walsh, Emma Weyant and Andrew Wilson. [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20]
Ono wrote, with Amir Aczel as coauthor, an autobiography, emphasizing the inspiration he gained from Ramanujan's mathematical research. [21] [22]
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. [23] He is on the Board of Directors of the Infinity Arts Foundation. [24]
From 2012 to 2014, Ono has competed in World Triathlon Cross Championships events while representing the United States. [25]
Ono is on the editorial board of several journals: [2]
In mathematics, a conjecture is a conclusion or a proposition that is proffered on a tentative basis without proof. Some conjectures, such as the Riemann hypothesis or Fermat's Last Theorem, have shaped much of mathematical history as new areas of mathematics are developed in order to prove them.
Srinivasa Ramanujan (22 December 1887 – 26 April 1920) was an Indian mathematician. Though he had almost no formal training in pure mathematics, he made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions, including solutions to mathematical problems then considered unsolvable.
Godfrey Harold Hardy was an English mathematician, known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis. In biology, he is known for the Hardy–Weinberg principle, a basic principle of population genetics.
John Edensor Littlewood was a British mathematician. He worked on topics relating to analysis, number theory, and differential equations and had lengthy collaborations with G. H. Hardy, Srinivasa Ramanujan and Mary Cartwright.
Pierre René, Viscount Deligne is a Belgian mathematician. He is best known for work on the Weil conjectures, leading to a complete proof in 1973. He is the winner of the 2013 Abel Prize, 2008 Wolf Prize, 1988 Crafoord Prize, and 1978 Fields Medal.
In mathematics, monstrous moonshine, or moonshine theory, is the unexpected connection between the monster group M and modular functions, in particular, the j function. The initial numerical observation was made by John McKay in 1978, and the phrase was coined by John Conway and Simon P. Norton in 1979.
194 is the natural number following 193 and preceding 195.
In number theory, a colossally abundant number is a natural number that, in a particular, rigorous sense, has many divisors. Particularly, it is defined by a ratio between the sum of an integer's divisors and that integer raised to a power higher than one. For any such exponent, whichever integer has the highest ratio is a colossally abundant number. It is a stronger restriction than that of a superabundant number, but not strictly stronger than that of an abundant number.
Amir Dan Aczel was an Israeli-born American lecturer in mathematics and the history of mathematics and science, and an author of popular books on mathematics and science.
In mathematics, Ramanujan's congruences are some remarkable congruences for the partition function p(n). The mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan discovered the congruences
Kannan Soundararajan is an Indian-born American mathematician and a professor of mathematics at Stanford University. Before moving to Stanford in 2006, he was a faculty member at University of Michigan, where he had also pursued his undergraduate studies. His main research interest is in analytic number theory, particularly in the subfields of automorphic L-functions, and multiplicative number theory.
In mathematics, the Riemann hypothesis is the conjecture that the Riemann zeta function has its zeros only at the negative even integers and complex numbers with real part 1/2. Many consider it to be the most important unsolved problem in pure mathematics. It is of great interest in number theory because it implies results about the distribution of prime numbers. It was proposed by Bernhard Riemann, after whom it is named.
Sujatha Ramdorai is an algebraic number theorist known for her work on Iwasawa theory. She is a professor of mathematics and Canada Research Chair at University of British Columbia, Canada. She was previously a professor at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
In mathematics, umbral moonshine is a mysterious connection between Niemeier lattices and Ramanujan's mock theta functions. It is a generalization of the Mathieu moonshine phenomenon connecting representations of the Mathieu group M24 with K3 surfaces.
Yasutaka Ihara is a Japanese mathematician and professor emeritus at the Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences. His work in number theory includes Ihara's lemma and the Ihara zeta function.
In number theory, a branch of mathematics, Ramanujan's ternary quadratic form is the algebraic expression x2 + y2 + 10z2 with integral values for x, y and z. Srinivasa Ramanujan considered this expression in a footnote in a paper published in 1916 and briefly discussed the representability of integers in this form. After giving necessary and sufficient conditions that an integer cannot be represented in the form ax2 + by2 + cz2 for certain specific values of a, b and c, Ramanujan observed in a footnote: "(These) results may tempt us to suppose that there are similar simple results for the form ax2 + by2 + cz2 whatever are the values of a, b and c. It appears, however, that in most cases there are no such simple results." To substantiate this observation, Ramanujan discussed the form which is now referred to as Ramanujan's ternary quadratic form.
The Great Mathematical Problems is a 2013 book by Ian Stewart. It discusses fourteen mathematical problems and is written for laypersons. The book has received positive reviews.
Miranda Chih-Ning Cheng is a Taiwanese-born and Dutch-educated mathematician and theoretical physicist who works as an associate professor at the University of Amsterdam. She is known for formulating the umbral moonshine conjectures and for her work on the connections between K3 surfaces and string theory.
Nayandeep Deka Baruah is an Indian mathematician and at present professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Tezpur University, India. He is known for his work related to the mathematics of Ramanujan, in particular he and his collaborators have found several Ramanujan type congruences using different methods.
Amanda L. Folsom is an American mathematician specializing in analytic number theory and its applications in combinatorics. She is a professor of mathematics at Amherst College, where she chairs the department of mathematics and statistics.