Henryk Iwaniec | |
---|---|
Born |
Elbląg, Poland |
October 9, 1947
Residence | United States |
Citizenship | Poland, United States |
Fields | Mathematician |
Institutions |
Polish Academy of Sciences Institute for Advanced Study Rutgers University University of Michigan |
Alma mater | University of Warsaw |
Doctoral advisor | Andrzej Schinzel |
Doctoral students |
Étienne Fouvry Harald Helfgott |
Known for |
analytic number theory Friedlander–Iwaniec theorem automorphic forms Sieve theory |
Notable awards |
Ostrowski Prize (2001) Cole Prize (2002) Steele Prize (2011) Shaw Prize (2015) |
Henryk Iwaniec (born October 9, 1947) is a Polish American mathematician, and since 1987 a professor at Rutgers University.
Iwaniec studied at the University of Warsaw, where he got his Ph.D. in 1972 under Andrzej Schinzel. He then held positions at the Institute of Mathematics of the Polish Academy of Sciences until 1983 when he left Poland. He held visiting positions at the Institute for Advanced Study, University of Michigan, and University of Colorado at Boulder before being appointed Professor of Mathematics at Rutgers University. He is a citizen of both Poland and the United States.
He and mathematician Tadeusz Iwaniec are twin brothers.
Iwaniec studies both sieve methods and deep complex-analytic techniques, with an emphasis on the theory of automorphic forms and harmonic analysis.
In 1997, Iwaniec and John Friedlander proved that there are infinitely many prime numbers of the form a2 + b4. Results of this strength had previously been seen as completely out of reach: sieve theory—used by Iwaniec and Friedlander in combination with other techniques—cannot usually distinguish between primes and products of two primes, say.
In 2001 Iwaniec was awarded the seventh Ostrowski Prize. The prize citation read, in part, "Iwaniec's work is characterized by depth, profound understanding of the difficulties of a problem, and unsurpassed technique. He has made deep contributions to the field of analytic number theory, mainly in modular forms on GL(2) and sieve methods."