Jeremy Quastel is a Canadian mathematician working in probability, stochastic analysis and partial differential equations. His research is on the large scale behaviour of stochastic interacting particle systems and stochastic partial differential equations.
In the last decade, he has concentrated on the KPZ (Kardar-Parisi-Zhang) universality class, which includes directed polymers in a random medium, randomly driven interfaces and nonlinear fluctuating hydrodynamics of one-dimensional systems, and is related to random matrix theory.
Quastel and coworkers found the first exact solutions of the KPZ equation, and, more recently solved a popular discretization, TASEP. Through this they discovered the strong coupling fixed point of the KPZ universality class. The KPZ fixed point is the first non-trivial universal fixed point in statistical physics not described via Gaussian models, perturbation theory, or conformal invariance, and is connected to completely integrable partial differential equations.
Quastel has been chair of the University of Toronto Mathematics Department 2017-21 and has received several awards for research including the CRM-Fields-PIMS Prize and the Jeffery-Williams Prize.
Professional position
- Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto
Subject groups
- Mathematics
Applied mathematics and theoretical physics, Pure mathematics, Statistics and Operational Research
- Astronomy and physics
Mathematical and theoretical physics, Statistical
