John Coates (mathematician)

Infobox_Scientist
name = John Henry Coates
box_width = 26em
image_width = 225px
caption = John H. Coates
birth_date = birth date and age|1945|1|26
birth_place = New South Wales, Australia
death_date =
death_place =
residence =
nationality =
field = Mathematics
work_institutions = Cambridge University
alma_mater = Australian National University
doctoral_advisor = Alan Baker
doctoral_students = Andrew Wiles, Jacques Tilouine, Rodney Yager, Bernadette Perrin-Riou, Gary McConnell, Leila Schneps, Pierre Colmez, Matthias Flach, Warren Sinnott, Daniel Delbourgo, Susan Howson, Otmar Venjakob, Sarah Zerbes, Thanasis Bouganis
known_for = Iwasawa theory
"p"-adic "L"-functions
prizes = Senior Whitehead Prize (1997)
religion =
footnotes =

John Henry Coates, FRS (born 26 January 1945) is a mathematician who holds (since 1986) the position of Sadleirian Professor of Pure Mathematics at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

Coates was born and grew up in Possum Brush in New South Wales, Australia, and studied at the Australian National University from which he gained a B.Sc. degree. He then moved to France, doing further study at the École Normale Superieure in Paris, before moving again to England. There he did postgraduate research at the University of Cambridge, his doctoral dissertation being on "p"-adic analogues of Baker's method.

In 1969, Coates was appointed assistant professor of mathematics at Harvard University in the United States, before moving again in 1972 to Stanford University where he became an associate professor.

In 1975, he returned to England where he was made a fellow of Emmanuel College, and took up a lectureship. Here he supervised the PhD of Andrew Wiles, and together they proved a partial case of the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture for elliptic curves with complex multiplication. [Coates, J.; Wiles, A. On the conjecture of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer. Invent. Math. 39 (1977), no. 3, pp. 223-251]

In 1977, Coates moved back to Australia, becoming a professor at the Australian National University, where he had been an undergraduate. The following year, he moved back to France, taking up a professorship at the University of Paris XI at Orsay. In 1985, he returned to the École Normale Superieure, this time as professor and director of mathematics.

He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1985, and was President of the London Mathematical Society from 1988 to 1990. The latter organisation awarded him the Senior Whitehead Prize in 1997, for "his fundamental research in number theory and for his many contributions to mathematical life both in the UK and internationally".

Since 1986 Coates has worked in the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics (DPMMS) of the University of Cambridge. In the last ten years he has focused on the study of various aspects of non-commutative Iwasawa theory, for instance, the study of the arithmetic of elliptic curves in nonabelian infinite extensions.

References

External links

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* [http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/site2002/People/coates_jh.html DPMMS profile]
* [http://www.emma.cam.ac.uk/about/fellows/display/index.cfm?fellow=83 Emmanuel College profile]

Persondata
NAME= Coates, John Henry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION= Mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH= January 26, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH= New South Wales, Australia
DATE OF DEATH=
PLACE OF DEATH=