Richard Borcherds

{{Infobox scientist

| name = Richard Borcherds

| birth_name = Richard Ewen Borcherds

| image = Richard Borcherds.jpg

| caption = Borcherds in 1993

| birth_date = {{birth date and age|df=yes|1959|11|29}}{{cite web |url=http://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/whoswho/U8125 |title=BORCHERDS, Prof. Richard Ewen |work=Who's Who 2014, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 2014; online edn, Oxford University Press }}{{subscription required}}

| birth_place = Cape Town, South Africa

| nationality = British{{Cite journal | last1=Goddard | first1=Peter |url=http://www.emis.de/journals/DMJDMV/xvol-icm/Laudationes/13goddard.MAN.html | arxiv=math/9808136 | year=1998 | journal=Documenta Mathematica | issn=1431-0635 | title=The work of Richard Ewen Borcherds | pages=99–108| bibcode=1998math......8136G }}.

| death_date =

| death_place =

| field = Mathematics

| work_institution = {{Plainlist|

{{nowrap|University of California, Berkeley}}
University of Cambridge

}}

| alma_mater = Trinity College, Cambridge

| doctoral_advisor = John Horton Conway{{MathGenealogy |id=32941 }}

| thesis_title = The leech lattice and other lattices

| thesis_url = http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.354191

| thesis_year = 1984

| doctoral_students = Daniel Allcock

| known_for = Borcherds algebra

| awards = {{Plainlist|

Whitehead Prize (1992)
EMS Prize (1992)
FRS (1994)
Fields Medal (1998)}}

| website = {{URL|math.berkeley.edu/~reb}}

}}

Richard Ewen Borcherds ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|b|ɔr|tʃ|ər|d|z}}; born 29 November 1959) is a British{{Cite web | url=http://www.nasonline.org/member-directory/members/20033092.html | title=Richard Borcherds}} mathematician currently working in quantum field theory. He is known for his work in lattices, group theory, and infinite-dimensional algebras,James Lepowsky, [https://www.ams.org/notices/199901/fields.pdf "The Work of Richard Borcherds"], Notices of the American Mathematical Society, Volume 46, Number 1 (January 1999).{{cite book|author=Borcherds, Richard E.|chapter=What is moonshine?|title=Doc. Math. (Bielefeld) Extra Vol. ICM Berlin, 1998, vol. I|year=1998|pages=607–616|chapter-url=https://www.elibm.org/ft/10011743000}} for which he was awarded the Fields Medal in 1998. He is well known for his proof of monstrous moonshine using ideas from string theory.

Early life

Borcherds was born in Cape Town, South Africa, but the family moved to Birmingham in the United Kingdom when he was six months old.

Education

Borcherds was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and Trinity College, Cambridge,{{cite web|url=http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/98legacy/08-19-1998a.html|title=UC Berkeley professor wins highest honor in mathematics, the prestigious Fields Medal|date=19 August 1998|publisher=University of California, Berkeley|access-date=22 July 2009}} where he studied under John Horton Conway.{{cite journal|first=Allyn|last=Jackson|date=November 1998|title=Borcherds, Gowers, Kontsevich, and McMullen Receive Fields Medals|journal=Notices of the American Mathematical Society|publisher=American Mathematical Society|volume=45|issue=10|url=https://www.ams.org/notices/199810/comm-fields.pdf}}

Career

After receiving his doctorate in 1985, Borcherds has held various alternating positions at Cambridge and the University of California, Berkeley, serving as Morrey Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Berkeley from 1987 to 1988. He was a Royal Society University Research Fellow.{{cite journal|last1=Cook|first1=Alan|author-link1=Alan Cook (physicist)|title=URFs become FRS: Frances Ashcroft, Athene Donald, and John Pethica|journal=Notes and Records of the Royal Society|publisher=Royal Society|location=London|volume=54|issue=3|year=2000|pages=409–411|doi=10.1098/rsnr.2000.0181|s2cid=58095147}} From 1996 he held a Royal Society Research Professorship at Cambridge before returning to Berkeley in 1999 as Professor of Mathematics.

An interview with Simon Singh for The Guardian, in which Borcherds suggested he might have some sort of traits possibly associated with Asperger syndrome,Simon Singh, [http://simonsingh.net/media/articles/maths-and-science/interview-with-richard-borcherds/ "Interview with Richard Borcherds"], The Guardian (28 August 1998) led to a chapter about him in a book on autism by Simon Baron-Cohen.{{Cite book|first=Simon|last=Baron-Cohen|author-link=Simon Baron-Cohen|title=The Essential Difference: Male and Female Brains and the Truth about Autism|chapter=A Professor of Mathematics|publisher=Basic Books|year=2004|isbn=0-465-00556-X|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/essentialdiffere00baro}} (see external links) records conversations with Richard Borcherds and his family.[https://www.theguardian.com/Archive/Article/0,4273,4103969,00.html High flying obsessives], The Guardian, December 2000 Baron-Cohen insinuated that while Borcherds may have had autistic traits, he did not meet a formal diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome.

Awards and honours

In 1992 Borcherds was one of the first recipients of the EMS prizes awarded at the first European Congress of Mathematics in Paris, and in 1994 he was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Zurich. In 1994, he was elected to be a Fellow of the Royal Society.{{cite web |url=https://collections.royalsociety.org/DServe.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqCmd=show.tcl&dsqSearch=(RefNo==%27EC%2F1994%2F05%27) |title=EC/1994/05: Borcherds, Richard Ewen |publisher=The Royal Society |archive-date=8 July 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190708083351/https://collections.royalsociety.org/DServe.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqCmd=show.tcl&dsqSearch=%28RefNo%3D%3D%27EC%2F1994%2F05%27%29 |location=London |url-status=dead |df=dmy-all }} In 1998 at the 23rd International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin, Germany he received the Fields Medal together with Maxim Kontsevich, William Timothy Gowers and Curtis T. McMullen. The award cited him "for his contributions to algebra, the theory of automorphic forms, and mathematical physics, including the introduction of vertex algebras and Borcherds' Lie algebras, the proof of the Conway-Norton moonshine conjecture{{cite journal | last=Borcherds | first=Richard E. | title=Monstrous moonshine and monstrous Lie superalgebras | journal=Inventiones Mathematicae | publisher=Springer Science and Business Media LLC | volume=109 | issue=1 | year=1992 | issn=0020-9910 | doi=10.1007/bf01232032 | pages=405–444| bibcode=1992InMat.109..405B | s2cid=16145482 | citeseerx=10.1.1.165.2714 }} and the discovery of a new class of automorphic infinite products." 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 10 November 2012. and in 2014 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.[http://www.nasonline.org/news-and-multimedia/news/april-29-2014-NAS-Election.html National Academy of Sciences Members and Foreign Associates Elected] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150818062140/http://www.nasonline.org/news-and-multimedia/news/april-29-2014-NAS-Election.html |date=18 August 2015 }}, National Academy of Sciences, 29 April 2014.