Peter Sarnak

Peter Sarnak
Born	(1953-12-18) 18 December 1953 Johannesburg, South Africa
Nationality	South Africa United States
Alma mater	Stanford University University of the Witwatersrand
Known for	Hafner–Sarnak–McCurley constant
Awards	George Pólya Prize (1998) Ostrowski Prize (2001) Levi L. Conant Prize (2003) Cole Prize (2005) Wolf Prize (2014)
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	Courant Institute, New York University Stanford University Princeton University Institute for Advanced Study
Doctoral advisor	Paul Cohen
Doctoral students	William Duke Alex Eskin Harald Helfgott Jacob Tsimerman Jonathan Pila Kannan Soundararajan Akshay Venkatesh Jade Vinson

Peter Clive Sarnak (born 18 December 1953) is a South African-born mathematician with dual South-African and American nationalities. He has been Eugene Higgins Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University since 2002, succeeding Andrew Wiles, and is an editor of the Annals of Mathematics. He is known for his work in analytic number theory. Sarnak is also on the permanent faculty at the School of Mathematics of the Institute for Advanced Study. He also sits on the Board of Adjudicators and the selection committee for the Mathematics award, given under the auspices of the Shaw Prize.

Education

Sarnak graduated University of the Witwatersrand (B.Sc. 1975) and Stanford University (Ph.D. 1980), under the direction of Paul Cohen. Sarnak’s highly cited work (with A. Lubotzky and R. Philips) applied deep results in number theory to Ramanujan graphs, with connections to combinatorics and computer science.

Career

• Assistant Professor, 1980–83; Associate Professor, 1983; Professor, 2001–2005, Courant Institute, New York University
• Associate Professor, 1984–87; Professor, 1987–91, Stanford University
• Professor, 1991–; H. Fine Professor, 1995–96; Chairman, Dept of Mathematics, 1996–99; Eugene Higgins Professor, 2002–, Princeton University
• Member, 1999–2002 and 2005–2007; Faculty, 2007–, Institute for Advanced Study

Awards and honors

Peter Sarnak was awarded the Polya Prize of Society of Industrial & Applied Mathematics in 1998, the Ostrowski Prize in 2001, the Levi L. Conant Prize in 2003, the Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Number Theory in 2005 and a Lester R. Ford Award in 2012. He is the recipient of the 2014 Wolf Prize in Mathematics.

He was also elected as member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) and Fellow of the Royal Society (UK) in 2002. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2010. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Chicago in 2015.

Publications

• Sarnak, P. (1982). "Spectral Behavior of Quasi Periodic Potentials". Commun. Math. Phys. 84: 377–401. doi:10.1007/bf01208483.
• Some Applications of Modular Forms, 1990
• (joint editor) Extremal Riemann Surfaces, 1997
• (joint author) Random Matrices, Frobenius Eigenvalues and Monodromy, 1998
• Peter Sarnak (2000). "Some problems in Number Theory, Analysis and Mathematical Physics". Mathematics: frontiers and perspectives. American Mathematical Society. pp. 261–269. ISBN 0821826972. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |editors= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help)
• (joint editor) Selected Works of Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro (Collected Works), 2000
• (joint author) Elementary Number Theory, Group Theory and Ramanujan Graphs, 2003
• (joint editor) Selected Papers Volume I-Peter Lax, 2005
• (joint editor) Automorphic Forms and Applications, 2007

See also

• Hafner–Sarnak–McCurley constant

External links

• Peter Sarnak at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• Online CV
• Preprints, Letters, Lectures, Notes.