Timothy Gowers facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Sir
Timothy Gowers
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Gowers at the Abel Prize ceremony in 2012
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| Born |
William Timothy Gowers
20 November 1963 |
| Education | King's College School, Cambridge Eton College |
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge (BA, MA, PhD) |
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| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | University of Cambridge University College London |
| Thesis | Symmetric Structures in Banach Spaces (1990) |
| Doctoral advisor | Béla Bollobás |
| Doctoral students | David Conlon Ben Green Tom Sanders |
Sir William Timothy Gowers is a famous British mathematician. He was born on November 20, 1963. He is a professor at the Collège de France and works at the University of Cambridge. In 1998, he won the Fields Medal, which is like the Nobel Prize for math. He won it for his work that connected two areas of math: functional analysis and combinatorics.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Timothy Gowers grew up in England. He went to King's College School, Cambridge, where he was a choirboy. Later, he attended Eton College, a well-known school.
He was very good at math from a young age. In 1981, he won a gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad. This is a big competition for young math students from all over the world. He even got a perfect score!
Gowers then went to Trinity College, Cambridge. He earned his PhD in 1990. His research was about "Symmetric Structures in Banach Spaces."
His Amazing Math Work
After finishing his studies, Gowers continued his math research. He worked at University College London before returning to Cambridge. He became a professor at Cambridge in 1998.
Gowers first focused on something called Banach spaces. These are special kinds of spaces used in math. He used clever methods to solve some long-standing problems in this area. For example, he helped show that not all infinite-dimensional Banach spaces behave in the same way.
Later, Gowers started working on combinatorics. This is a branch of math that deals with counting, arranging, and combining things. He made big breakthroughs in this field.
One of his important achievements was proving a part of Szemerédi's theorem. This theorem is about finding patterns in sets of numbers. Gowers also created something called the Gowers norm. This is a powerful tool used to study patterns in numbers. His work helped other mathematicians, like Ben Green and Terence Tao, to prove the Green–Tao theorem. This theorem shows that there are very long sequences of prime numbers that are evenly spaced.
Gowers also looked at hypergraphs, which are like graphs but more complex. He also came up with the idea of a quasirandom group. This helps mathematicians understand groups that behave a bit like random ones.
More recently, he has been working on how to solve math problems using computers. He also looks at problems like the P versus NP problem. This is a famous unsolved problem about how hard it is for computers to solve certain tasks.
Sharing Math with Everyone
Timothy Gowers believes in making math understandable for more people.
Explaining Complex Ideas
He has written books that explain modern math research to general readers. One of his books is called Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction. He even helped with the movie Proof, which is about a math genius.
He also edited a huge book called The Princeton Companion to Mathematics. This book explains many different parts of math. For this work, he won the Euler Book Prize. In 2020, he became a professor at the Collège de France, which is known for sharing knowledge with the public.
Math Online: The Polymath Project
Gowers is also a pioneer in using the internet for math. He wondered if mathematicians could work together online to solve problems. This led to the Polymath Project.
In this project, mathematicians from all over the world work together on a single problem. They share ideas and solutions on a blog. The first Polymath project successfully solved a difficult problem in just seven weeks!
He also helped create Tricki.org. This is like a Wikipedia for math problem-solving methods. Many famous mathematicians have contributed to it.
Making Research Open
In 2012, Gowers started a movement to change how scientific papers are published. He called for a boycott of a big publisher called Elsevier. He believed that research papers should be more easily available to everyone.
This movement, called the Cost of Knowledge project, encouraged researchers to stop supporting journals from that publisher. It led to an "Academic Spring," where more people pushed for open access to scientific research.
In 2016, Gowers helped create a new math journal called Discrete Analysis. This journal shows that high-quality math research can be published without high costs.
Awards and Recognition
Timothy Gowers has received many important awards for his contributions to mathematics.
- In 1996, he won the Prize of the European Mathematical Society.
- In 1998, he was awarded the Fields Medal, one of the highest honors in mathematics.
- In 1999, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society, a group of top scientists.
- In 2012, he was made a Knight Bachelor by the British monarch. This means he can use the title "Sir."
- He was also listed in Nature's 10 in 2012, which highlights ten important people in science that year.
- He received the De Morgan Medal and the Sylvester Medal in 2016.
Beyond Math: Personal Life
Timothy Gowers was born in Marlborough, England. His family has a history of notable people. His father, Patrick Gowers, was a composer. His great-grandfather, Sir Ernest Gowers, was famous for his guides on English language. His great-great-grandfather, Sir William Gowers, was a well-known neurologist.
Timothy Gowers has two sisters: Rebecca, a writer, and Katharine, a violinist. He has five children and enjoys playing jazz piano in his free time.
He has been married twice. His first marriage was to Emily Thomas, a classicist. They had three children together. In 2008, he married Julie Barrau, a history lecturer. They have two children.
