Fellows Directory
Timothy Gowers
Sir Timothy Gowers FRS
Fellow
Elected:
1999
Biography
Timothy Gowers is a mathematician whose application of analytic and combinatorial methods to the study of whole numbers has yielded several important discoveries in the field. He has also made valuable contributions to combinatorics and functional analysis by finding new connections between these two areas of mathematics.
Timothy is a keen communicator of mathematical research at all levels, and his 2002 book Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction has proved a bestseller amongst those with little prior mathematical knowledge. His personal blog, set up in 2007 and regularly updated, is widely read by those within the mathematics community.
Awarded the Fields Medal at the age of 34, Timothy also received a knighthood in the 2012 Queen’s Birthday Honours List. In 2013, he was one of 17 international scholars and thinkers given an honorary degree to commemorate the University of St Andrews’ 600th anniversary.
Professional positions
Royal Society Research Professor, Centre for Mathematical Sciences, University of Cambridge
Fellow, Trinity College, University of Cambridge
Interests and expertise
Subject groups
Keywords
Automatic theorem proving,
Discrete mathematics,
Theoretical computer science
Awards
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Fields Medal
Provided important contributions to functional analysis, making extensive use of methods from combination theory. These two fields apparently have little to do with each other, and a significant achievement of Gowers has been to combine these fruitfully.
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For his ground breaking results in the theory of Banach spaces, pure combinatorics, and additive number theory.