Steven Zucker

{{Short description|American mathematician (1949–2019)}}

{{Infobox scientist

| name = Steven Zucker

| image =

| image_size = 150px

| caption =

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1949|9|12|df=y}}{{cite web| url=https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/202107/rnoti-p1156.pdf| publisher=Notices of the American Mathematical Society (August 2021, Volume 68 Number 7) | title=Remembering Steve Zucker}}

| birth_place = New York City, New York

| death_date = {{Death date and age|2019|9|13|1949|9|12|df=y}}{{cite web|url=https://hub.jhu.edu/2019/09/19/stephen-zucker-mathematics-obituary/|publisher=Johns Hopkins University|title=Influential Johns Hopkins math professor Steven Zucker dies at 70|last=Wallach|first=Rachel|date=19 September 2019}}

| death_place = Baltimore, Maryland

| nationality = American

| fields = Mathematics

| workplaces = Johns Hopkins University

| alma_mater = Princeton University

| doctoral_advisor = Spencer Bloch

| doctoral_students =

| known_for = Zucker conjecture

| awards =

}}

Steven Mark Zucker (12 September 1949 – 13 September 2019) was an American mathematician who introduced the Zucker conjecture, proved in different ways by Eduard Looijenga (1988) and by Leslie Saper and Mark Stern (1990).

Zucker completed his Ph.D. in 1974 at Princeton University under the supervision of Spencer Bloch. His work with David A. Cox led to the creation of the Cox–Zucker machine, an algorithm for determining if a given set of sections provides a basis (up to torsion) for the Mordell–Weil group of an elliptic surface $E\; \backslash to\; S$, where $S$ is isomorphic to the projective line.

He was part of the mathematics faculty at the Johns Hopkins University. In 2012, he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.{{cite web|url=http://www.ams.org/profession/fellows-list|title= List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society|access-date=2013-09-01}}