Kannan Soundararajan
Encyclopedia
Kannan Soundararajan is an India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

n mathematician
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

. He currently is a professor of mathematics at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

. Before moving to Stanford
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 in 2006, he was a faculty at University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

 where he pursued his undergraduate studies. His main research interest is in Number theory especially L-functions
L-function
The theory of L-functions has become a very substantial, and still largely conjectural, part of contemporary analytic number theory. In it, broad generalisations of the Riemann zeta function and the L-series for a Dirichlet character are constructed, and their general properties, in most cases...

 and multiplicative number theory
Multiplicative number theory
Multiplicative number theory is a subfield of analytic number theory that deals with prime numbers and with factorization and divisors. The focus is usually on developing approximate formulas for counting these objects in various contexts. The prime number theorem is a key result in this subject...

.

Early Life

Soundararajan grew up in Chennai and was a student at Padma Seshadri High School in Nungambakkam in Madras (now Chennai), India
Chennai
Chennai , formerly known as Madras or Madarasapatinam , is the capital city of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, located on the Coromandel Coast off the Bay of Bengal. Chennai is the fourth most populous metropolitan area and the sixth most populous city in India...

. He represented India at the International Mathematical Olympiad
International Mathematical Olympiad
The International Mathematical Olympiad is an annual six-problem, 42-point mathematical olympiad for pre-collegiate students and is the oldest of the International Science Olympiads. The first IMO was held in Romania in 1959. It has since been held annually, except in 1980...

 in 1991 and won a Silver Medal.

Education

Soundararajan joined the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1991 for undergraduate studies, and graduated with highest honours in 1995. Soundararajan won the inaugural Morgan Prize
Morgan Prize
The Morgan Prize in Mathematics may refer to:* Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student awarded jointly by the American Mathematical Society, Mathematical Association of America and Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics* De Morgan...

 in 1995 for his work in analytic number theory
Analytic number theory
In mathematics, analytic number theory is a branch of number theory that uses methods from mathematical analysis to solve problems about the integers. It is often said to have begun with Dirichlet's introduction of Dirichlet L-functions to give the first proof of Dirichlet's theorem on arithmetic...

 whilst an undergraduate at the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

, where he later served as professor. He joined Princeton University in 1995 and did his Ph.D under the guidance of Professor Peter Sarnak
Peter Sarnak
Peter Clive Sarnak is a South African-born mathematician. 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...

. As a graduate student at Princeton, he held a prestigious Sloan Foundation Fellowship.

Career

After his Ph.D. he received the first five year fellowship from the American Institute of Mathematics, and held positions at Princeton University, the Institute for Advanced Study, and the University of Michigan. He moved to Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 in 2006 where he is currently a Professor of Mathematics and the Director of the Mathematics Research Center (MRC) at Stanford.

Awards

He received the Salem Prize
Salem Prize
The Salem Prize, founded by the widow of Raphael Salem, is awarded every year to a young mathematician judged to have done outstanding work in Salem's field of interest, primarily the theory of Fourier series.-Past winners:...

 in 2003 "for contributions to the area of Dirichlet L-functions and related character sums".
In 2005, he won the $10,000 SASTRA Ramanujan Prize
SASTRA Ramanujan Prize
The SASTRA Ramanujan Prize, founded by Shanmugha Arts, Science, Technology & Research Academy University in Kumbakonam, India, Srinivasa Ramanujan's hometown, is awarded every year to a young mathematician judged to have done outstanding work in Ramanujan's fields of interest...

, shared with Manjul Bhargava
Manjul Bhargava
Manjul Bhargava is a Canadian-American mathematician of Indian origin. He is the R. Brandon Fradd Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University...

, awarded by SASTRA in Thanjavur, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, for his outstanding contributions to 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...

. In 2011, he was awarded the Infosys Prize.

Selected publications

  • R. Holowinsky and K. Soundararajan, "Mass equidistribution for Hecke eigenforms," arXiv:0809.1636v1
  • K. Soundararajan, "Nonvanishing of quadratic Dirichlet L-functions at s=1/2" arXiv:math/9902163v2

External links

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