Preda Mihăilescu
Preda Mihăilescu | |
|---|---|
| Born | 23 May 1955 Bucharest, Romania |
| Nationality | Romanian |
| Alma mater | ETH Zürich |
| Known for | proving Catalan's conjecture |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | University of Göttingen |
| Doctoral advisor | Erwin Engeler Hendrik Lenstra |
Preda V. Mihăilescu (born 23 May 1955) is a Romanian mathematician, best known for his proof of the 158-year-old Catalan's conjecture.
Biography
[edit]Born in Bucharest,[1] he is the brother of Vintilă Mihăilescu.
After leaving Romania in 1973, he settled in Switzerland.[1] He studied mathematics and computer science in Zürich, receiving a PhD from ETH Zürich in 1997.[2] His PhD thesis, titled Cyclotomy of rings and primality testing,[3] was written under the direction of Erwin Engeler and Hendrik Lenstra.
For several years, he did research at the University of Paderborn, Germany. Since 2005, he has held a professorship at the University of Göttingen.
Major research
[edit]In 2002, Mihăilescu proved Catalan's conjecture.[4][5][6] This number-theoretical conjecture, formulated by the French and Belgian mathematician Eugène Charles Catalan in 1844, had stood unresolved for 158 years. Mihăilescu's proof appeared in Crelle's Journal in 2004.
Notes
[edit]References
[edit]- P. J. Campbell (2002). "Science news 161". Mathematics Magazine. Vol. 75, no. 4.
- Ian Stewart (7 March 2013). The Great Mathematical Problems. Profile Books. p. 124. ISBN 978-1-84765-351-2.
- Bilu, Yuri F.; Bugeaud, Yann; Mignotte, Maurice (2014). The Problem of Catalan. Springer. OCLC 893117743.
- Metsänkylä, Tauno (2004). "Catalan's Conjecture: Another old Diophantine problem solved" (PDF). Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 41: 43–57. doi:10.1090/s0273-0979-03-00993-5. MR 2015449.
- Mihăilescu, Preda (1997). Cyclotomy of rings and primality testing (Ph.D. thesis). ETH Zurich. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04.
- Mihăilescu, Preda (2004). "Primary Cyclotomic Units and a Proof of Catalan's Conjecture". Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik. 2004 (572): 167–195. doi:10.1515/crll.2004.048. MR 2076124.
- Mihăilescu, Preda (2005). Reflection, Bernoulli Numbers and the Proof of Catalan's Conjecture. European Congress of Mathematics. Stockholm, Sweden: European Mathematical Society. pp. 325–340. doi:10.4171/009-1/21. MR 2185753.
- Schoof, René (2008). Catalan's Conjecture. Universitext. Springer. OCLC 656399081.
External links
[edit]- Preda Mihăilescu at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- Web page at Göttingen
- Former Web page at Paderborn (no longer updated)
- Mihăilescu, Preda in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
