Bryna Kra facts for kids

Bryna Rebekah Kra, born in 1966, is an American mathematician. She is a professor at Northwestern University. She was elected president of the American Mathematical Society in 2021. This is a very important role in the world of mathematics.

Bryna Kra is a member of important groups like the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. Her work focuses on dynamical systems and ergodic theory. These are areas of math that study how things change over time. She also uses these ideas to solve problems in number theory (the study of numbers) and combinatorics (the study of counting and arrangements).

Bryna Kra's Journey in Math

Bryna Kra was born in 1966 in Boston. She loved math from a young age. She went to Harvard University and earned her first degree in 1988. Later, she got her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1995. Her main teacher there was Yitzhak Katznelson.

After her studies, she worked at several universities. These included the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the University of Michigan. She then became a professor at Pennsylvania State University. Since 2004, Professor Kra has been teaching math at Northwestern University. She was even the head of the math department there from 2009 to 2012.

Books by Bryna Kra

Bryna Kra has also written a math book. With another mathematician, Bernard Host, she wrote Nilpotent Structures in Ergodic Theory. This book was published in 2018. It is a detailed book for people who study advanced math.

Awards and Recognition

Professor Kra has received many honors for her work. In 2010, she won the Levi L. Conant Prize. She earned this award for an article she wrote. The article explained the Green–Tao theorem. This theorem is about patterns in prime numbers.

In 2006, she was invited to speak at a big meeting called the International Congress of Mathematicians. She also became an AMS Centennial Fellow that year. In 2012, she was named a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. This means she is a highly respected member of the math community.

In 2016, she became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Then, in 2019, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. These are very high honors for scientists in the United States. She was also named a Simons Fellow in Mathematics in 2021.

In 2023, she was honored by the Association for Women in Mathematics. This was for her work in helping women in math. She created programs like GROW (Graduate Research Opportunities for Women). She also helped lead the American Mathematical Society as its president starting in February 2023.

Her Family and Math

Bryna Kra's father is also a mathematician. His name is Irwin Kra. It seems a love for math runs in her family!