Alan Baker (mathematician)

Alan Baker

Alan Baker (born August 19, 1939 in London - † February 4, 2018 ) was a British mathematician .

Life

Baker began studying mathematics with the number theorist Harold Davenport at University College London . After completing his bachelor's degree, he moved to Trinity College in Cambridge , where he received his doctorate from Davenport in 1964 with Some aspects of diophantine approximation and became a " Fellow " of Trinity College in the same year . From 1964 to 1968 he did research at Cambridge University as a "Research Fellow". From 1968 to 1974 he was "Director of Studies in Mathematics" and was then appointed Professor of Pure Mathematics. In 1970 he was a "Fellow" at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and in 1974 visiting professor at Stanford University .

Baker is known for his "effective methods" in number theory . In 1970, at the age of 31, he was awarded the Fields Medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Nice , where he gave a plenary lecture on Effective Methods in the Theory of Numbers . He received the award for his work in the field of Diophantine equations . Furthermore, he succeeded in proving a tightening of Gelfond-Schneider's theorem by showing that a set of natural logarithms over the algebraic numbers is linearly independent if it is linearly independent over the rational numbers.

He was a "Fellow" of the Royal Society , the American Mathematical Society , the Indian National Science Academy and since 1998 a member of the Academia Europaea . In 1998 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Strasbourg .

His PhD students include John Coates , Roger Heath-Brown , David Masser, and Cameron L. Stewart .

Fonts

• Transcendental number theory. Cambridge University Press, 1975, ext. 1979, (Cambridge Mathematical Library), updated 1990, reprint 1999.
• With Gisbert Wüstholz : Logarithmic forms and diophantine geometry. (New Mathematical Monographs) Cambridge University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0521882682 .

literature

• David Masser: Alan Baker, 1939–2018, Notices AMS, January 2019, p. 32
• Jean-Pierre Serre: Travaux de Baker, Seminaire Bourbaki, No. 368, 1971, pp. 73-86 numdam

Web links

Commons : Alan Baker  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson :  Alan Baker (mathematician). In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Tributes Paid to Professor Alan Baker. Trinity College Cambridge, February 5, 2018, accessed February 5, 2018 . 
2. ^ Mathematics Genealogy Project
3. ^ Membership directory: Alan Baker. Academia Europaea, accessed on October 25, 2017 (English, with biographical and other information).