Daihachiro Sato was a Japanese

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

mathematician who was awarded the Lester R. Ford

L. R. Ford

Lester Randolph Ford, Sr. was an American mathematician, editor of the American Mathematical Monthly from 1942 to 1946, and President of the Mathematical Association of America from 1947 to 1948....

 Award in 1976 for his work in number theory

Number theory

Number theory is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers. Number theorists study prime numbers as well...

, specifically on his work in the Diophantine

Diophantine equation

In mathematics, a Diophantine equation is an indeterminate polynomial equation that allows the variables to be integers only. Diophantine problems have fewer equations than unknown variables and involve finding integers that work correctly for all equations...

 representation of prime numbers. His doctoral supervisor at the University of California, Los Angeles

University of California, Los Angeles

The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...

 was Ernst G. Straus

Ernst G. Straus

Ernst Gabor Straus was a German-American mathematician who helped found the theories of Euclidean Ramsey theory and of the arithmetic properties of analytic functions...

. It is due to this extensive collaboration with Straus that Sato has an Erdős number

Erdos number

The Erdős number describes the "collaborative distance" between a person and mathematician Paul Erdős, as measured by authorship of mathematical papers.The same principle has been proposed for other eminent persons in other fields.- Overview :...

 as well as an Einstein number of 2.

Sato was an only child born in Fujinomiya, Shizuoka

Fujinomiya, Shizuoka

is a city located in central Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. As of 2010, the city had an estimated population of 122,464 and the density of 389 persons per km². The total area was 314.81 km².-Geography:...

, Japan on June 1, 1932. While still attending high school, Sato published his first mathematics research paper, which led to his acceptance at the Tokyo University of Education

University of Tsukuba

is located in the city of Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture in the Kantō region of Japan. The University has 28 college clusters and schools with a total of around 15,000 students...

. There, Sato earned a B.S. in theoretical physics

Theoretical physics

Theoretical physics is a branch of physics which employs mathematical models and abstractions of physics to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena...

, a popular academic field at the time due to the recent Nobel Prize in Physics

Nobel Prize in Physics

The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...

 awarded to Sin-Itiro Tomonaga

Sin-Itiro Tomonaga

was a Japanese physicist, influential in the development of quantum electrodynamics, work for which he was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 along with Richard Feynman and Julian Schwinger.-Biography:...

, a professor at this university.

Following his undergraduate degree in Japan, he switched his studies to mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

, earning a M.Sc. and a Ph.D from UCLA, and eventually became tenured at the University of Saskatchewan

University of Saskatchewan

The University of Saskatchewan is a Canadian public research university, founded in 1907, and located on the east side of the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. An "Act to establish and incorporate a University for the Province of Saskatchewan" was passed by the...

, Regina campus in Regina, Saskatchewan

Regina, Saskatchewan

Regina is the capital city of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The city is the second-largest in the province and a cultural and commercial centre for southern Saskatchewan. It is governed by Regina City Council. Regina is the cathedral city of the Roman Catholic and Romanian Orthodox...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

. Following his retirement in 1997 he was granted the position Professor Emeritus at the University of Regina

University of Regina

The University of Regina is a public research university located in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. Founded in 1911 as a private denominational high school of the Methodist Church of Canada, it began an association with the University of Saskatchewan as a junior college in 1925, and was disaffiliated...

 which is what the Regina campus became in 1974. Subsequently, he further taught at the Tokyo University of Social Welfare

Tokyo University of Social Welfare

is a private university in Toshima, Tokyo, Japan, established in 2000.It has campuses in Nagoya and Isesaki, Gunma also.-External links:*...

 from 2000 until 2006, after which he returned to Canada. He died at Ladner, British Columbia

Ladner, British Columbia

Ladner was created as a fishing village on the banks of the Fraser River. It is a part of the Municipality of Delta, British Columbia, Canada, and a suburb of Vancouver....

 on May 28, 2008.

Sato's interests included integer valued entire functions, generalized interpolation by analytic functions, prime representing functions, and function theory. It is in the field of prime representing functions that Sato co-authored a paper with James P. Jones, Hideo Wada, and Douglas Wiens

Douglas Wiens

Douglas Paul Wiens is a Canadian statistician; he is a professor in the Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences at the University of Alberta....

 entitled "Diophantine Representation of the Set of Prime Numbers", which won them the Lester R. Ford

L. R. Ford

Lester Randolph Ford, Sr. was an American mathematician, editor of the American Mathematical Monthly from 1942 to 1946, and President of the Mathematical Association of America from 1947 to 1948....

 Award in Mathematics in 1976.