David Masser

David William Masser ( born August 11, 1948 in London ) is a British mathematician in the field of number theory, a professor at the University of Basel.

Life

David Masser studied at the University of Cambridge. He was a student of Alan Baker, who in 1970 was awarded the Fields Medal. In 1974 he received his doctorate; his doctorate dealt with elliptic functions and transcendental numbers. Initially he worked at the University of Nottingham and later at the University of Michigan. Masser is known for his work in the field of number theory. He was elected on 26 May 2005 as a member ( "Fellow" ) to the Royal Society. With the election of the Royal Society Massers contributions to the theory of transcendental numbers and diophantine geometry honored (where he worked with a lot Gisbert Wüstholz ). Masser has Erdős number 2

Together with Joseph Masser Oesterlé formulated in the 1980s, the so-called abc- conjecture. The established presumption is one of the most important unsolved problems on Diophantine equations. Would the abc conjecture to be proved, it would mean that the solution to a lot of other unsolved problems in number theory would directly result from it. The very complex proof by Andrew Wiles of Fermat's Last theorem would thus be reduced to one side.

In 1983 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Warsaw ( Zero estimates on group varieties ).

Writings

• Elliptic Functions and transcendence theory, Springer Verlag, 1975, Lecture Notes in Mathematics, # 437, ( online here )