Abstract

Abstract to follow, but here is a biography to whet your mathematical appetite:

Prof. Zagier finished high school aged 13 and subsequently studied at MIT for three years, completing his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the age of 16. He then received his Phd under Friedrich Hirzebruch aged 20 and was named professor when he was 24. He has been a scientific member of the MPIM in Bonn since its founding and has been one of its directors since 1995.

Prof. Zagier’s main area of work is in number theory, but he has also done extensive work in seemingly unrelated areas. In collaboration with Benedict Gross he proved the Gross-Zagier formula which played an instrumental role in the solution of the Class Number Problem. He has also done work relating modular forms to string theory and black holes. Together with his former doctoral student Maxim Kontsevich he introduced the notion of ‘periods’ in a paper which features, among other things, L-functions and motives. He is perhaps best known for his “one-sentence proof of Fermat’s two squares theorem”. He is the winner of both the Cole Prize and the Von Staudt Prize.