Photo: VOA / Public domain (source: Wikimedia Commons)

Peter Sarnak

ピーター・サルナック　/　ぴーたー・さるなっく

Mathematician from South Africa

December 18, 1953 (age 72)　・　Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa

Gauteng
mathematician
university teacher

My Take

Peter Sarnak is the kind of mind that humbles me. Born in Johannesburg in 1953, trained at Stanford, he now holds a permanent chair at the Institute for Advanced Study and succeeded Andrew Wiles at Princeton, which alone tells you the altitude he operates at. The list of honors, the Wolf Prize, the Cole Prize, the Sylvester Medal, reads like a map of modern number theory. I cannot follow the mathematics, but I deeply value people who push the frontier of human knowledge in near silence, with no audience and no applause. The world advances because quiet geniuses like him keep working. I take my hat off entirely.

Overview

Peter Clive Sarnak (born 18 December 1953) is a South African and American mathematician. Sarnak has been a member of the permanent faculty of the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study since 2007. He is also Eugene Higgins Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University since 2002, succeeding Sir Andrew Wiles, and is an editor of the Annals of Mathematics.

Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

1. Profile

Name (English): Peter Sarnak
Name (Japanese): ピーター・サルナック
Reading: ぴーたー・さるなっく
Born: December 18, 1953 (age 72)
Zodiac / Chinese zodiac: Sagittarius / Snake
Origin: Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa
Blood type: Private
Height: Private
Agency: Private
Occupation: mathematician / university teacher

2. Background

Elementary school: Private
Junior high: Private
High school: Private
University: Stanford University

Awards & achievements

2005 Cole Prize in Number Theory
2014 Wolf Prize in Mathematics
1998 George Pólya Prize
2001 Ostrowski Prize
2003 Levi L. Conant Prize
2018 Fellow of the American Mathematical Society
2014 honorary doctor of the Shandong University
Sylvester Medal

3. Relationships

Spouse: Private
Children: Private
Parents: Private
Siblings: Private

4. Personality

Motto

Private

6. Links

Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%94%E3%83%BC%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B5%E3%83%AB%E3%83%8A%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF

Mathematician — see all →　·　University teacher — see all →　·　More people from South Africa →