Preda Mihăilescu

Infobox_Scientist
name = Preda Mihăilescu


image_width =
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birth_date = birth date and age|1955|5|23
birth_place = Bucharest, Romania
death_date =
death_place =
residence = Romania flagicon|Romania Switzerland flagicon|Switzerland
Germany flagicon|Germany
nationality =
field = Mathematics
work_institution = University of Göttingen
alma_mater = ETH Zürich
doctoral_advisor = Erwin Engeler
Hendrik Lenstra
doctoral_students
known_for = Catalan's conjecture, now
Mihăilescu's theorem
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religion =
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Preda V. Mihăilescu (b. May 23, 1955) is a Romanian-born German mathematician, best known for his proof of Catalan's conjecture.

Born in Bucharest, he is the brother of Vintilă Mihăilescu. After leaving Romania in 1973, he settled in Switzerland. He studied mathematics and informatics in Zürich, receiving his Ph.D. from ETH Zürich in 1997. His thesis, titled "Cyclotomy of rings and primality testing", was written under the direction of Erwin Engeler and Hendrik Lenstra.

For several years, he did research at the University of Paderborn, Germany. Since 2005 he is a professor at the Georg-August University of Göttingen.

French mathematician Eugène Charles Catalan formulated his celebrated conjecture in 1844. The proof of the conjecture, given by Mihăilescu in 2002, appeared in Crelle's Journal in 2004. The result is now known as Mihăilescu's theorem.

References

* Tauno Metsänkylä, [http://www.ams.org/bull/2004-41-01/S0273-0979-03-00993-5/S0273-0979-03-00993-5.pdf "Catalan's Conjecture: Another old Diophantine problem solved"] , Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 41 (2004), 43–57. MathSciNet | id=2015449
* Preda Mihăilescu, [http://www.degruyter.de/journals/crelle/2004/pdf/572_167.pdf "Primary cyclotomic units and a proof of Catalan's conjecture"] , J. Reine Angew. Math. 572 (2004), 167–195. MathSciNet | id=2076124
* Preda Mihăilescu, "Reflection, Bernoulli numbers and the proof of Catalan's conjecture", European Congress of Mathematics, 325–340, Eur. Math. Soc., Zürich, 2005. MathSciNet | id=2185753

External links

*MathGenealogy|id=35936
* [http://www.uni-math.gwdg.de/preda/ Web page at Göttingen]
* [http://www-math.uni-paderborn.de/~preda/ Web page at Paderborn (no more updated)]

Persondata
NAME= Mihăilescu, Preda
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION= Mathematics
DATE OF BIRTH= May 23, 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH= Bucharest, Romania
DATE OF DEATH=
PLACE OF DEATH=