Bryna Kra
{{short description|American mathematician}}
{{Infobox scientist
|name = Bryna Kra
|image =
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|birth_name = Bryna Rebekah Kra
|birth_date = {{Birth year and age|1966}}
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|citizenship = American
|field =
|work_institutions = Northwestern University
University of Michigan
|alma_mater = Stanford University, Harvard University
|doctoral_advisor = Yitzhak Katznelson
|thesis_title = Commutative groups of diffeomorphisms of the circle
|thesis_year = 1995
|known_for = Ergodic theory
|influences =
|influenced =
|prizes = Levi L. Conant Prize (2010)
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|website = {{URL|http://www.math.northwestern.edu/~kra/}}
}}
Bryna Rebekah Kra (born 1966) is an American mathematician and the Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor at Northwestern University. Kra served as the president of the American Mathematical Society from 2023 to 2025. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. Her academic work centered on dynamical systems and ergodic theory. In particular Kra has made significant contributions to the structure theory of characteristic factors for multiple ergodic averages.{{citation|url=https://www.quantamagazine.org/bryna-kra-builds-mathematical-windows-to-symbolize-the-complex-20201117/|magazine=Quanta Magazine|title=Searching Symbols for the Rules of Change: Bryna Kra searches for the patterns in sequences of numbers that explain how complicated dynamical systems evolve over time|date=November 17, 2020|first=Rachel|last=Crowell}} This work has allowed her to address problems in number theory and combinatorics.{{citation
| last1 = Host | first1 = Bernard
| last2 = Kra | first2 = Bryna
| doi = 10.4007/annals.2005.161.397
| issue = 1
| journal = Annals of Mathematics
| mr = 2150389
| pages = 397–488
| series = Second Series
| title = Nonconventional ergodic averages and nilmanifolds
| url = http://www.math.northwestern.edu/~kra/papers/convnil.pdf
| volume = 161
| year = 2005| doi-access = free
}}.
Education and career
Kra was born in 1966 in Boston.{{citation|journal=Notices of the American Mathematical Society|page=942|volume=62|issue=8|date=September 2015|title=Bryna Kra|department=Biographies of Candidates 2015|url=https://www.ams.org/notices/201508/rnoti-p931a.pdf#page=12 }} She graduated with a bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1988, and obtained her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1995 under the guidance of Yitzhak Katznelson.{{mathgenealogy|id=39209}} She held postdoctoral positions at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the University of Michigan, the IHÉS and the Ohio State University before joining the mathematics faculty at Pennsylvania State University as an assistant professor. Since 2004 Kra has been a professor of mathematics at Northwestern University, where she was department chair from 2009 to 2012.
Book
With Bernard Host, Kra is the author of the book Nilpotent Structures in Ergodic Theory (Mathematical Surveys and Monographs 236, American Mathematical Society, 2018).
Honors
In 2010 Kra was awarded the Levi L. Conant Prize for her expository article "The Green–Tao theorem on arithmetic progressions in the primes: an ergodic point of view".{{citation
| last = Kra | first = Bryna
| doi = 10.1090/S0273-0979-05-01086-4
| issue = 1
| journal = Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society
| mr = 2188173
| pages = 3–23
| series = New Series
| title = The Green-Tao theorem on arithmetic progressions in the primes: an ergodic point of view
| volume = 43
| year = 2006| doi-access = free
}}{{citation|url=https://www.ams.org/notices/201004/rtx100400515p.pdf|title=2010 Conant Prize|journal= Notices of the American Mathematical Society|date=April 2010|pages=515–516|volume=57|issue=4}}. In 2006 she was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid ("From combinatorics to ergodic theory and back again"),{{cite web |author-last=Kra | author-first=Bryna |title=In:Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians (Madrid, August 22-30,2006) (Volume III Invited Lectures) |url=https://www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/ICM/Proceedings/ICM2006.3/ICM2006.3.ocr.pdf | access-date=2024-01-07}} and was named an AMS Centennial Fellow the same year.{{citation|url=https://www.ams.org/notices/200606/people.pdf|journal= Notices of the American Mathematical Society|department=Mathematics People|title=2006–2007 AMS Centennial Fellowships Awarded|page=686|first=Allyn|last=Jackson|volume=53|issue=6|date=June–July 2006}}. In 2012 she became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.[https://www.ams.org/profession/fellows-list List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society], retrieved 2013-07-07. In 2016 she became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.{{citation|url=https://www.amacad.org/content/members/newFellows.aspx?s=c|title=Newly Elected Members|date=April 2016|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences|access-date=2016-04-20}} In 2019, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.{{citation|url=http://www.nasonline.org/news-and-multimedia/news/2019-nas-election.html|work=News from the National Academy of Sciences|title=National Academy of Sciences Elects Members and Foreign Associates; Historic Number of Women Elected to Its Membership|date=April 30, 2019}} She was named a 2021 Simons Fellows in Mathematics.{{Cite web|date=2021-02-04|title=2021 Simons Fellows in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics Announced|url=https://www.simonsfoundation.org/2021/02/04/2021-simons-fellows-in-mathematics-and-theoretical-physics-announced/|access-date=2021-07-18|website=Simons Foundation|language=en-US}} Kra was elected to the 2023 class of fellows of the Association for Women in Mathematics "for her vision and work creating programs to support women in mathematics, especially GROW (Graduate Research Opportunities for Women) and AWM student chapters; for her leadership in the mathematics community, including serving on the AWM Executive Committee and serving as president of AMS; and for making advocacy for women a priority throughout her career."{{cite web |title=The AWM Fellows Program: 2023 Class of AWM Fellows |url=https://awm-math.org/awards/awm-fellows/2023-awm-fellows/ |publisher=Association for Women in Mathematics |access-date=23 October 2022}} Kra was elected president of the American Mathematical Society in 2021 and she served as president from February 2023 to January 2025.{{cite web|url=https://www.ams.org/news?class_id=1&expand=1&type=news|title=Kra Takes Helm of AMS Presidency|publisher=American Mathematical Society|access-date=10 April 2023}}
Family relations
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [http://www.math.northwestern.edu/~kra/ Homepage at Northwestern University]
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20140911153650/http://www.chicagowomeninstem.org/taxonomy/term/146 Portrait at Northwestern University]
{{Chaos theory}}
{{AMS Presidents}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kra, Bryna}}
Category:20th-century American mathematicians
Category:21st-century American mathematicians
Category:Stanford University alumni
Category:Harvard University alumni
Category:Pennsylvania State University faculty
Category:Northwestern University faculty
Category:Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
Category:Place of birth missing (living people)
Category:University of Michigan faculty
Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences