Vietnamese Ngo Bao Chau has been hired as a professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago

Ngo Bao Chau, whose groundbreaking mathematical proof was honored by TIME Magazine as one of the top-10 scientific discoveries of 2009, has been hired as a professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago.

“This is one of the great mathematicians of our time, very clearly,” said Robert Fefferman, Dean of the Physical Sciences Division and the Max Mason Distinguished Service Professor in Mathematics, on the website. “I expect really great things from this young man.”

Chau’s scientific discovery proved a theory that connected two branches of mathematics, number theory and group theory.

The theory, developed in 1979 by the Canadian-American mathematician Robert Langlands and thus now known as the Langlands program or the fundamental lemma, captured deep symmetries associated with equations that involve whole numbers.

“He proved a basic result, a matching conjecture called ‘the fundamental lemma,’ so named because it represents the central gate for progress in the Langlands program,” said Peter Constantin, the Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor in Mathematics and Chairman of the Mathematics Department.

“The proof by Chau opens dramatically new avenues for the geometric Langlands program,” he said.

Langlands tried to prove the fundamental lemma during the 1970s. In later years, the University of Chicago’s Robert Kottwitz and three colleagues from other institutions developed approaches to the problem. Constantin said Chau “added numerous striking ideas” to their work in “a 200-page masterpiece.”

In addition to Kottwitz, the William J. Friedman and Alicia Townsend Friedman Professor in Mathematics, Chau said he had learned a lot from Vladimir Drinfeld, the Harry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor in Mathematics, as well as a host of other University of Chicago mathematicians whose specialties are closely allied with his, including Alexander Beilinson, the David and Mary Winton Green University Professor in Mathematics, Spencer Bloch, the R.M. Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Mathematics and professors Victor Ginzburg, Kazuya Kato and Madhav Nori.

The opportunity to work more closely with colleagues at U-Chicago “certainly has a lot to do with my decision to come to Chicago,” Chau said.

“People are addressing some of the most fundamental questions in mathematics at the Department of Mathematics of Chicago. I have been having a mathematical conversation with Bob Kottwitz for many years. I count on the pleasure of pursing this conversation with him for the years to come.”

A native of Vietnam’s capital of Hanoi, Chau received his doctoral degree from Université Paris-Sud in 1997. Currently a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., Chau received the Oberwolfach Prize in 2007, the Prix Sophie Germain de l’Académie des Sciences de Paris in 2007 and the Clay Research Award in 2004.

“With the hire of Chau, the recent arrival of Kato, the presence of Beilinson and Drinfeld and our other stellar faculty, the Department of Mathematics is pursuing its historical leading role in the country,” Constantin said.

“We are not a large department, so we cannot cover all aspects of mathematics. But what we do, we try to do at the highest level, bar none: The department is committed to uncompromised intellectual leadership.

“The standards are extremely high, and we are really quite proud of the quality of the Mathematics Department. Very, very proud, and Ngo [Bao Chau] is a personification of this,” he added.

Source: Thanh Nien

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