# Charles Fefferman

Charles Fefferman
Born April 18, 1949 (age 67)
Washington, D.C., United States
Residence United States
Nationality American
Fields Mathematics
Institutions Princeton University,
University of Chicago
Alma mater University of Maryland, College Park
Princeton University
Doctoral students Spyros Alexakis
Notable awards Alan T. Waterman Award (1976)
Fields Medal (1978)
Bergman Prize (1992)
Bôcher Memorial Prize (2008)

Charles Louis Fefferman (born April 18, 1949) is an American mathematician at Princeton University. His primary field of research is mathematical analysis.

## Biography

A child prodigy, Fefferman entered college by the age of eleven and had written his first scientific paper by the age of 15 in German. He received his B.S. from University of Maryland in mathematics, which is part of the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences at age 17. Then received his PhD in mathematics at 20 from Princeton University under Elias Stein, Fefferman achieved a full professorship at the University of Chicago at the age of 22. This made him the youngest full professor ever appointed in the United States. At 24, he returned to Princeton to assume a full professorship there — a position he still holds. He won the Alan T. Waterman Award in 1976 (the first person to get the award) and the Fields Medal in 1978 for his work in mathematical analysis. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1979. He was appointed the Herbert Jones Professor at Princeton in 1984.

In addition to the above, his honors include the Salem Prize, the Bôcher Memorial Prize, and the Bergman Prize, as well as election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Fefferman contributed several innovations that revised the study of multidimensional complex analysis by finding fruitful generalisations of classical low-dimensional results. Fefferman's work on partial differential equations, Fourier analysis, in particular convergence, multipliers, divergence, singular integrals and Hardy spaces earned him a Fields Medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians at Helsinki in 1978.

His early work included a study of the asymptotics of the Bergman kernel off the boundaries of pseudoconvex domains in ${\displaystyle \mathbb {C} ^{n}}$. He has studied mathematical physics, harmonic analysis, fluid dynamics, neural networks, geometry, mathematical finance and spectral analysis, amongst others.

## Family

Charles Fefferman and his wife Julie have two daughters, Nina and Lainie. Lainie Fefferman is a composer, taught math at Saint Ann's School (New York City) and holds a degree in music from Yale University as well as a Ph.D. in music composition from Princeton.[1] She has an interest in Middle Eastern music.[2] Nina is a computational biologist whose research is concerned with the application of mathematical models to complex biological systems.[3] Charles Fefferman's brother, Robert Fefferman, is also an accomplished mathematician and former Dean of the Physical Sciences Division at the University of Chicago.[4]

## Works

Fefferman has published several articles. His most cited papers include, in the order of citations:

• (with E. Stein) "Hp spaces of several variables", Acta Mathematica (1972).
• (with R. Coifman) "Weighted norm inequalities for maximal functions and singular integrals", Studia Mathematica (1974).
• (with E. Stein) "Some maximal inequalities", American Journal of Mathematics (1971).
• "The Bergman kernel and biholomorphic mappings of pseudoconvex domains", Inventiones mathematicae (1974).
• "The uncertainty principle", Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society (1983). ("online article". MR 707957.)
• "Inequalities for strongly singular convolution operators", Acta Mathematica (1970).
• (with P. Constantin and A. Majda) "Geometric constraints on potentially singular solutions for the 3-D Euler equations", Communications in Partial Differential Equations (1996).
• "The multiplier problem for the ball", Annals of Mathematics (1971).

## Notes

1. ^ [1]
2. ^ Lainie Fefferman website
3. ^ Fefferman lab website
4. ^ [2] Robert Fefferman webpage at the University of Chicago Office of the President