Jonathan Pila is an Australian mathematician based at the University of Oxford. He completed his BSc at the University of Melbourne and his PhD at Stanford, under the supervision of Peter Sarnak. He has held posts at Columbia, McGill, Bristol and (as a visiting member) the Institute for Advanced Study. Jonathan also took a substantial break from professional mathematics to work in his family’s manufacturing business.
His research interests lie in number theory and model theory. A focus has been applying the theory of o-minimality to Diophantine problems. This work began with an early paper with Enrico Bombieri, and developed through collaborations with Alex Wilkie and Umberto Zaniier. The techniques obtained have led to significant advances in Diophantine problems, including Jonathan’s breakthrough unconditional proof of the André–Oort conjecture for powers of the modular curve.
Jonathan is the recipient of a Clay Research Award and the 2011 London Mathematical Society Senior Whitehead Prize, and is a co-recipient of the 2013 ASL Karp Prize. He was a plenary speaker at the 2014 International Congress of Mathematicians.
Professional position
- Reader in Mathematical Logic, Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford
- Professorial Fellow, Wolfson College, University of Oxford
Subject groups
- Mathematics
Pure mathematics
