Kannan Soundararajan
{{Short description|American mathematician and professor (born 1973)}}
{{ Infobox scientist
| name = Kannan Soundararajan
| image = Kannan Soundararajan Stanford October 2010.jpg
| image_size =
| caption = Soundararajan teaching at Stanford University
| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1973|12|27|mf=yes}}
| birth_place =
| death_date =
| death_place =
| nationality = American
| fields = Mathematics
| workplaces = Stanford University
University of Michigan
| alma_mater = University of Michigan
Princeton University
| doctoral_advisor = Peter Sarnak
| doctoral_students = {{plainlist|1=
}}
| known_for =
| awards = Ostrowski Prize (2011)
Infosys Prize (2011)
SASTRA Ramanujan Prize (2005)
Salem Prize (2003)
Morgan Prize (1995)
}}
Kannan Soundararajan (born December 27, 1973){{cite journal |author= |date=January 2019 |title=2013 AMS Elections - Special Section |url=https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/201308/noti-full-election.pdf |journal=Notices of the American Mathematical Society |volume=60 |issue=8 |page=1085 |issn=1088-9477 |access-date=2024-03-02}} is an Indian-born American mathematician and a professor of mathematics at Stanford University. Before moving to Stanford in 2006, he was a faculty member at University of Michigan, where he had also pursued his undergraduate studies. His main research interest is in analytic number theory, particularly in the subfields of automorphic L-functions, and multiplicative number theory.
Early life
{{BLP unsourced section|date=November 2019}}
Soundararajan grew up in Chennai and was a student at Padma Seshadri High School in Nungambakkam in Chennai. In 1989, he attended the prestigious Research Science Institute. He represented India at the International Mathematical Olympiad in 1991 and won a Silver Medal.
Education
Soundararajan joined the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1991 for undergraduate studies, and graduated with highest honours in 1995. Soundararajan won the inaugural Morgan Prize in 1995 for his work in analytic number theory while an undergraduate at the University of Michigan,[https://www.ams.org/notices/199603/comm-morgan.pdf AMS-MAA-SIAM Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student.] Notices of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 43 (1996), no. 3, pp. 323–324 where he later served as professor. He joined Princeton University in 1995 and did his Ph.D under the guidance of Professor Peter Sarnak.
Career
After his Ph.D. he received the first five-year fellowship from the American Institute of Mathematics, and held positions at Princeton University, the Institute for Advanced Study, and the University of Michigan. He moved to Stanford University in 2006 where he is, as of November 2022,{{cite web | title=Kannan Soundararajan | website=Mathematics | url=https://mathematics.stanford.edu/people/kannan-soundararajan | access-date=2022-11-12}} the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Mathematics.
He provided a proof{{cite journal | last1=Balasubramanian | first1=R. | last2=Soundararajan | first2=K. | title=On a conjecture of R. L. Graham | journal=Acta Arithmetica | volume=75 | issue=1 | year=1996 | issn=0065-1036 | pages=1–38 | doi=10.4064/aa-75-1-1-38 | url=https://eudml.org/doc/206861 | access-date=2022-11-12| doi-access=free }} of a conjecture of Ron Graham in combinatorial number theory jointly with Ramachandran Balasubramanian. He made important contributions in settling the arithmetic Quantum Unique Ergodicity conjecture{{cite journal | last=Soundararajan | first=Kannan | title=Quantum unique ergodicity for {{not a typo|SL2(ℤ)\ℍ}} | journal=Annals of Mathematics | volume=172 | issue=2 | year=2010 | issn=0003-486X | doi=10.4007/annals.2010.172.1529 | pages=1529–1538| s2cid=15626593 | doi-access=free }} for Maass wave forms and modular forms.
Awards
He received the Salem Prize in 2003 "for contributions to the area of Dirichlet L-functions and related character sums". In 2005, he won the $10,000 SASTRA Ramanujan Prize, shared with Manjul Bhargava, awarded by SASTRA in Thanjavur, India, for his outstanding contributions to number theory.{{cite web |url=http://www.math.ufl.edu/~fgarvan/ramanujan/things/fsrp.html |title=The First SASTRA Ramanujan Prizes |accessdate=2011-04-24 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110726092256/http://www.math.ufl.edu/~fgarvan/ramanujan/things/fsrp.html |archivedate=2011-07-26 }} In 2011, he was awarded the Infosys science foundation prize.{{Cite web|url=http://www.infosys-science-foundation.com/prize/laureates/2011/kannan-soundararajan.asp|title=Infosys Prize - Laureates 2011 - Prof. Kannan Soundararajan}} He was awarded the Ostrowski prize[http://www.ostrowski.ch/pdf/preis2011.pdf Ostrowski Prize] in 2011, shared with Ib Madsen and David Preiss, for a cornucopia of fundamental results in the last five years to go along with his brilliant earlier work.
He gave an invited talk at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2010, on the topic of "Number Theory".{{cite web|title=ICM Plenary and Invited Speakers since 1897|url=http://www.mathunion.org/db/ICM/Speakers/SortedByCongress.php|publisher=International Congress of Mathematicians|access-date=2013-08-15|archive-date=2017-11-08|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171108012153/http://www.mathunion.org/db/ICM/Speakers/SortedByCongress.php|url-status=dead}} In July 2017, Soundararajan was a plenary lecturer in the Mathematical Congress of the Americas.{{cite web|url=https://mca2017.org|title=Mathematical Congress of the Americas 2017}} He was elected to the 2018 class of fellows of the American Mathematical Society.{{citation|url=http://ams.org/profession/ams-fellows/new-fellows|title=2018 Class of the Fellows of the AMS|publisher=American Mathematical Society|accessdate=2017-11-03}} Kannan Soundararajan was invited as a plenary speaker{{cite web | title=ICM 2022 | website=ICM 2022 | url=https://virtualicm2022.opade.digital/days/7/sessions/a381765e-a414-4f81-80df-b1b957620142 | access-date=2022-11-12}} of the 2022 International Congress of Mathematicians, scheduled to take place in Saint Petersburg, but moved to Helsinki and online because of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Selected publications
- R. Holowinsky and K. Soundararajan, "Mass equidistribution for Hecke eigenforms," [https://arxiv.org/abs/0809.1636v1 arXiv:0809.1636v1]
- K. Soundararajan, "Nonvanishing of quadratic Dirichlet L-functions at s=1/2" [https://arxiv.org/abs/math/9902163 arXiv:math/9902163v2]
- K. Soundararajan, "Moments of the Riemann zeta function" https://annals.math.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/annals-v170-n2-p17-p.pdf
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [http://math.stanford.edu/~ksound/ Homepage at Stanford University]
- [http://www.aimath.org/news/que/ Making Waves]
- {{MathGenealogy |id=53166}}
- {{IMO results |id=2755}}
- [http://gonitsora.com/kannan-soundararajan-wins-the-infosys-prize-2011/ Infosys Prize 2011]
- [https://av.tib.eu/search?f=creator%3Bhttp://av.tib.eu/resource/Soundararajan__Kannan Videos of Kannan Soundararajan] in the AV-Portal of the German National Library of Science and Technology
{{Recipients of SASTRA Ramanujan Prize winners|state=collapsed}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Soundararajan, Kannan}}
Category:Indian emigrants to the United States
Category:Indian number theorists
Category:University of Michigan alumni
Category:Stanford University Department of Mathematics faculty
Category:21st-century American mathematicians
Category:Recipients of the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize
Category:International Mathematical Olympiad participants
Category:University of Michigan faculty