Yitang Zhang facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Yitang Zhang
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Zhang in 2014
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| Born | February 5, 1955 Shanghai, China
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| Citizenship | United States |
| Alma mater | Peking University (BS, MA) Purdue University (PhD) |
| Known for | Establishing the existence of an infinitely repeatable prime 2-tuple |
| Awards | Ostrowski Prize (2013) Cole Prize (2014) Rolf Schock Prize (2014) MacArthur Fellowship (2014) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Number theory |
| Institutions | University of New Hampshire University of California, Santa Barbara |
| Thesis | The Jacobian conjecture and the degree of field extension (1992) |
| Doctoral advisor | Tzuong-Tsieng Moh (莫宗堅) |
Yitang Zhang (Chinese: 张益唐; born February 5, 1955) is a Chinese-American mathematician. He mainly studies number theory, which is a branch of mathematics. Since 2015, he has been a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Before this, Zhang worked as a lecturer at the University of New Hampshire. In 2013, he published an important paper in the Annals of Mathematics. In this paper, he showed for the first time that there's a specific small gap between prime numbers that happens infinitely often. This amazing discovery earned him several awards. These include the 2013 Ostrowski Prize, the 2014 Cole Prize, and the 2014 Rolf Schock Prize. He also received a 2014 MacArthur Fellowship, which is a special award for talented people.
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Early Life and Education
Yitang Zhang was born in Shanghai, China. His family originally came from Pinghu, Zhejiang. He lived with his grandmother in Shanghai when he was young. Around age nine, he figured out a proof for the Pythagorean theorem on his own. When he was ten, he first learned about famous math problems like Fermat's Last Theorem and Goldbach's conjecture.
During the Cultural Revolution in China, Zhang and his mother were sent to work in the countryside. He worked as a laborer for ten years and could not go to high school. After the Cultural Revolution ended, Zhang started studying at Peking University in 1978. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics in 1982. He then continued his studies with Professor Pan Chengbiao, a number theorist, and received a Master of Science degree in mathematics in 1984.
After getting his master's degree, Zhang received a full scholarship to Purdue University in the United States. This was thanks to recommendations from important professors at Peking University. He arrived at Purdue in January 1985 and studied there for about six and a half years. He earned his PhD in mathematics in December 1991.
Zhang's Career Journey
After finishing his PhD, Zhang found it hard to get a job in academia. He mentioned in an interview that the job market was tough. He also said his PhD advisor did not write him recommendation letters. This made it even harder for him to find a university position.
For several years, Zhang worked different jobs outside of academia. He worked as an accountant and delivered food for a restaurant in New York City. He also worked at a motel in Kentucky and at a Subway sandwich shop. At one point, he even lived in his car while looking for work.
In 1999, Zhang finally found an academic job. He was hired as a lecturer at the University of New Hampshire by Kenneth Appel. He worked there until early 2014. After his big breakthrough in prime numbers, the University of New Hampshire made him a full professor. In 2014, he spent a semester at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Then, in the fall of 2015, he joined the University of California, Santa Barbara as a professor.
Amazing Discoveries in Math
On April 17, 2013, Zhang announced a major discovery. He proved that there are infinitely many pairs of prime numbers that are less than 70 million apart. This means that no matter how far you go, you will always find more pairs of primes that are relatively close to each other. This result is a big step towards solving the famous twin prime conjecture. The twin prime conjecture suggests there are infinitely many pairs of primes that are exactly two apart, like (3, 5) or (11, 13).
Zhang's paper was accepted by Annals of Mathematics in May 2013. This was his first published paper since 2001. Leading experts in analytic number theory reviewed his proof and confirmed its correctness. Other mathematicians, like those in the Polymath project, have built upon Zhang's work.
Zhang's result means that there is at least one even number k smaller than 70,000,000. For this k, there are infinitely many pairs of prime numbers that differ by exactly k. In November 2013, another mathematician named James Maynard used a different method to show that k could be 600 or less. Later, in April 2014, the Polymath project 8 group further reduced this number to k ≤ 246. Mathematicians continue to work on this problem, hoping to find an even smaller gap.
Awards and Recognitions
Yitang Zhang has received many honors for his groundbreaking work. In 2013, he was awarded the Morningside Special Achievement Award in Mathematics. He also won the 2013 Ostrowski Prize.
In 2014, he received the Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Number Theory. He also earned the 2014 Rolf Schock Prize in Mathematics. That same year, he was given a MacArthur award, which is sometimes called a "genius grant." He was also chosen as an Academia Sinica Fellow. Zhang was an invited speaker at the 2014 International Congress of Mathematicians, a very important event for mathematicians worldwide.
Political Views
In 1989, Yitang Zhang joined a group that supported Chinese democracy. In an interview in 2013, he stated that his beliefs about democracy had not changed since then.
