Bjorn Poonen

Bjorn Poonen is a mathematician and currently Professor of Mathematics at MIT.His research is primarily in number theory and algebraic geometry, but he has occasionally published in other subjects such as probability [Amir Dembo, Qi-Man Shao, Bjorn Poonen, and Ofer Zeitouni, "Random polynomials with few or no real zeros", "J. Amer. Math. Soc." 15 (2002), 857-892.] and computer science [Bjorn Poonen, "The worst case in Shellsort and related algorithms", "J. Algorithms" 15 (1993), 101-124.] .He has edited two books [Kiran Kedlaya, Bjorn Poonen, and Ravi Vakil, [https://www.maa.org/reviews/brief_mar03.html "The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition 1985-2000: Problems, Solutions, and Commentary"] , Math. Assoc. of America, 2002.] [Bjorn Poonen and Yuri Tschinkel (eds.), [http://www.springer.com/birkhauser/mathematics/book/978-0-8176-3259-5 "Arithmetic of Higher-Dimensional Algebraic Varieties"] , Progress in Math. 226, Birkhäuser, 2004.] , and his research articles have been cited by approximately 300 distinct authors. [ [http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/mrcit/individual.html?mrauthid=250625 MathSciNet author citations] ] He is the founding managing editor of the journal "Algebra & Number Theory" [ [http://jant.org "Algebra & Number Theory"] ] , and serves also on the editorial boards of "International Mathematics Research Notices" [ [http://imrn.oxfordjournals.org/ "International Mathematics Research Notices"] ] , "Involve" [ [http://www.involvemath.org/ "Involve"] (mathematics journal)] , the "Journal of the American Mathematical Society" [ [http://www.ams.org/jams/ "Journal of the American Mathematical Society"] ] , the "London Mathematical Society Journal of Computation and Mathematics" [ [http://www.lms.ac.uk/jcm/ "LMS Journal of Computation and Mathematics"] ] , and the "A K Peters Research Notes in Mathematics" book seriesFact|date=March 2008.

Education

In 1989, Poonen graduated from Harvard with an A.B. in Mathematics and Physics, "summa cum laude".Fact|date=March 2008He then studied under Kenneth Alan Ribet at the University of California, Berkeley,completing a Ph.D. there in 1994. [ [http://www.genealogy.ams.org/id.php?id=32425 Mathematics Genealogy] ]

Academic positions

Poonen held postdoctoral positions at MSRI and Princeton University before moving to the University of California, Berkeley in 1997.Fact|date=March 2008 He has also held visiting positions at the Isaac Newton Institute (1998 and 2005), the Université Paris-Sud (2001), Harvard University (2007), and MIT (2007).Fact|date=March 2008

Major honors and awards

* David and Lucile Packard Fellowship [ [http://www.cs.virginia.edu/packard/directory/field/mathematics.html Packard fellows in mathematics] ]
* Sloan Research Fellowship ["Notices Amer. Math. Soc." 45, no. 6, (June-July 1998), p. 723.]
* William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition: winner in 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1988 (the only other four-time winners since 1938 are Don Coppersmith, Arthur Rubin, Ravi D. Vakil, Gabriel Carroll, Reid W. Barton, and Daniel Kane). [ [http://www.maa.org/awards/putnam.html Putnam competition results] ]
* International Mathematical Olympiad: silver medalist in 1985. [ [http://www.imo-official.org/participant_r.aspx?id=9627 International Mathematical Olympiad results] ]
* American High School Mathematics Examination: only participant (out of 380,000) to receive a perfect score in 1985. [ [http://www.unl.edu/amc/d-publication/d1-pubarchive/2004-5pub/2005-HSsummary.pdf American High School Mathematics Examination results] , page 31]

Trivia

* Poonen is cited in the Wikipedia page on the number 12.
* He co-authored a paper entitled "How to spread rumors fast". [C. Kenneth Fan, Bjorn Poonen, and George Poonen, "How to spread rumors fast", "Mathematics Magazine" 70 (1997), 40-46.]
* His Erdős-Bacon number is 5: he co-authored scholarly articles with Andrew Granville [Brian Conrey, Andrew Granville, Bjorn Poonen, and Kannan Soundararajan, "Zeros of Fekete polynomials", "Ann. Inst. Fourier (Grenoble)" 50 (2000), no. 3, 865--889.] , Wen-Ch'ing Winnie Li [A. R. Calderbank, Wen-Ch'ing Winnie Li, and Bjorn Poonen, A 2-adic approach to the analysis of cyclic codes, "IEEE Trans. Inform. Th." 43 (1997), 1-11.] , Andrew Odlyzko [Andrew Odlyzko and Bjorn Poonen, Zeros of polynomials with 0,1 coefficients, "L'Enseign. Math" 39 (1993), 317-348.] , and Peter Winkler [E. G. Coffman, Jr., Bjorn Poonen, and Peter Winkler, Packing random intervals, "Prob. Theory Relat. Fields" 102 (1995), 105--121.] , all of whom have Erdős number 1 [ [http://www.oakland.edu/enp/Erdos0 The Erdős number project] ] ; and he appeared in the documentary "Julia Robinson and Hilbert's Tenth Problem" [ [http://www.zalafilms.com/films/jrparticipants.html "Julia Robinson and Hilbert's Tenth Problem"] ] narrated by Danica McKellar, who has Bacon number 2. [ [http://oracleofbacon.org/cgi-bin/oracle/movielinks?firstname=Bacon%2C+Kevin&game=1&secondname=danica+mckellar The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia] ]

References

* Personal webpage [http://math.mit.edu/~poonen/]