Harold Stark

{{short description|American mathematician}}

{{about|the mathematician|the American admiral|Harold Rainsford Stark}}

{{Infobox scientist

|name = Harold M. Stark

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|birth_date = {{birth date and age|1939|8|6|mf=y}}

|birth_place = Los Angeles, California, U.S.

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|fields = Mathematics

|workplaces = University of Michigan
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
University of California, San Diego

|alma_mater = California Institute of Technology (BS)
University of California, Berkeley (PhD)

|doctoral_advisor = Derrick Henry Lehmer

|academic_advisors =

|doctoral_students = Jeffrey Hoffstein
Jeffrey Lagarias
M. Ram Murty
Andrew Odlyzko

|notable_students =

|known_for = Stark conjectures
Stark–Heegner theorem

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|awards = American Academy of Arts and Sciences
United States National Academy of Sciences

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Harold Mead Stark (born August 6, 1939)

{{cite journal |date=September 2007 |title=Biographies of Candidates 2007 |journal=Notices of the American Mathematical Society |volume=54 |issue=8 |pages=1043–1057 |url=https://www.ams.org/notices/200708/tx070801043p.pdf |access-date=2009-05-25 }}

is an American mathematician, specializing in number theory. He is best known for his solution{{cite journal | last=Stark | first=H. M. | title=A complete determination of the complex quadratic fields of class-number one. | journal=Michigan Mathematical Journal | volume=14 | issue=1 | date=1 April 1967 | issn=0026-2285 | doi=10.1307/mmj/1028999653 | doi-access=free | url=https://projecteuclid.org/journals/michigan-mathematical-journal/volume-14/issue-1/A-complete-determination-of-the-complex-quadratic-fields-of-class/10.1307/mmj/1028999653.pdf | access-date=18 January 2025 }} of the Gauss class number 1 problem, in effect correcting and completing the earlier work of Kurt Heegner, and for Stark's conjecture. More recently, he collaborated with Audrey Terras to study zeta functions in graph theory. He is currently on the faculty of the University of California, San Diego.

Stark received his bachelor's degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1961 and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1964. He was on the faculty at the University of Michigan from 1964 to 1968, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1968 to 1980, and at the University of California, San Diego from 1980 to the present.{{cite web|title=UC San Diego Mathematics Professor Elected to Prestigious National Academy of Sciences |url=http://physicalsciences.ucsd.edu/news/releases/release_detail.php?release_id=157 |publisher=University of California, San Diego |date=2007-05-01 |access-date=2009-05-25 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100610154658/http://physicalsciences.ucsd.edu/news/releases/release_detail.php?release_id=157 |archive-date=June 10, 2010 }}

Stark was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1983 and to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2007. In 2012, he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.[https://www.ams.org/profession/fellows-list List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society], retrieved 2013-08-05.