Robert Langlands facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
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| Born | October 6, 1936 New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
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| Nationality | Canadian/American |
| Education | University of British Columbia (BSc, MSc) Yale University (PhD) |
| Known for | Langlands program |
| Awards | Jeffery–Williams Prize (1980) Cole Prize (1982) Wolf Prize (1995–96) Steele Prize (2005) Nemmers Prize (2006) Shaw Prize (2007) Abel Prize (2018) Order of Canada (2019) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | Princeton University Middle East Technical University University of California, Berkeley Yale University Institute for Advanced Study |
| Thesis | Semi-Groups and Representations of Lie Groups (1960) |
| Doctoral advisor | Cassius Ionescu-Tulcea |
| Doctoral students | James Arthur Thomas Callister Hales Diana Shelstad |
Robert Phelan Langlands is a famous Canadian mathematician. He was born on October 6, 1936. He is best known for creating the Langlands program. This is a huge set of ideas and connections in mathematics. It links different areas like representation theory (studying how math objects can be "represented") and number theory (the study of numbers). For his amazing work, he received the 2018 Abel Prize, which is like the Nobel Prize for mathematics. He used to be a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he even had Albert Einstein's old office! He retired in 2020.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Robert Langlands was born in 1936 in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada. His parents were Robert and Kathleen Langlands. He has two younger sisters. In 1945, his family moved to White Rock. There, his parents ran a business that supplied building materials and did construction.
Robert went to Semiahmoo Secondary School. He started college at the University of British Columbia when he was only 16. He earned his first degree in mathematics in 1957. He continued his studies there and received a master's degree in 1958. After that, he went to Yale University in the United States. He earned his Ph.D. (a very advanced degree) in 1960.
Career and Research
After finishing his studies, Langlands began his teaching career. He worked at Princeton University from 1960 to 1967. He was an associate professor there. For one year, from 1967 to 1968, he worked in Turkey at METU. His office was right next to another famous mathematician, Cahit Arf.
He was also a research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. Then, he became a professor at Yale University from 1967 to 1972. In 1972, he joined the Institute for Advanced Study. This is a famous place where top scientists and mathematicians do research. He became a professor emeritus there in 2007.
The Langlands Program
Robert Langlands' most important work is the Langlands program. This program is a big idea that connects different parts of mathematics. It links areas that might seem very different. Imagine math as a big puzzle with many separate pieces. The Langlands program suggests how these pieces fit together.
One of the main goals of the program is to find hidden connections. It links things like automorphic forms (special functions with patterns) to Galois groups (which help us understand equations). These connections help mathematicians solve problems in number theory, which is the study of whole numbers.
Langlands first shared his ideas about this program in a famous letter. He wrote it to another mathematician, André Weil, in 1967. This letter laid out the main ideas that would become the Langlands program.
Impact on Mathematics
The Langlands program has had a huge impact. It has guided a lot of mathematical research for decades. One special part of the program helped Andrew Wiles prove Fermat's Last Theorem. This was a very old and famous math problem that had puzzled mathematicians for centuries.
In the 1980s, Langlands also looked into physics. He studied topics like how things spread through a material. In recent years, he has returned to his work on automorphic forms. He continues to explore new ideas in this field.
Awards and Recognition
Robert Langlands has received many important awards for his work. These include:
- The 1996 Wolf Prize, which he shared with Andrew Wiles.
- The 2005 AMS Steele Prize.
- The 2007 Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences.
- The 2018 Abel Prize, which is one of the highest honors in mathematics.
He was also elected to many important groups. These include the Royal Society of Canada and the Royal Society in London. In 2012, he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States. In 2019, he was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada. This is one of Canada's highest honors.
In 2020, his old high school, Semiahmoo Secondary School, honored him. They put up a mural to celebrate his amazing contributions to mathematics.
Personal Life
Robert Langlands married Charlotte Lorraine Cheverie in 1957. They have four children, two daughters and two sons. He is a citizen of both Canada and the United States.
Besides math, Langlands enjoys learning foreign languages. He speaks English, French, Turkish, and German. He can also read Russian. He learns languages to better understand math papers from other countries and just for fun.
See also
In Spanish: Robert Langlands para niños
- Automorphic L-function
- Endoscopic group
- Geometric Langlands correspondence
- Jacquet–Langlands correspondence
- Langlands classification
- Langlands decomposition
- Langlands–Deligne local constant
- Langlands dual
- Langlands group
- Langlands–Shahidi method
- Local Langlands conjectures
- Standard L-function
- Taniyama group
