Brian Conrey

John Brian Conrey ( born June 23, 1955 in Agaña, Guam ) is an American mathematician who deals with number theory.

Conrey studied at Santa Clara University ( BA 1976) and in 1980 received his doctorate at the University of Michigan at Hugh Montgomery ( Zeros of derivatives of Riemann's xi -function on the critical line ). 1980-1982 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois and from 1982 to 1983 and from 1987 to 1988 at the Institute for Advanced Study. From 1983 he was a professor at Oklahoma State University, where he was Chairman from 1991 to 1997 the mathematics faculty. Since 1997 he is director of the American Institute of Mathematics ( AIM) in Palo Alto, which he founded with. Since 2005 he is also part-time professor at the University of Bristol.

Conrey is concerned with the analytic theory of L-functions, especially the Riemann zeta function and application of random matrices to the theory of L-functions. In 1986 he proved that at least 40 % of the zeros of the Riemann zeta function lie on the critical line with real part 1/2, which he and others significantly improved previous results of Norman Levinson.

He is co-editor of the Journal of Number Theory. In 2008 he received the Levi L. Conant Prize - for his article The Riemann Hypothesis ( Notices of the AMS, March 2003). In 1986 he was Sloan Fellow. He lives in San Martin ( California), is married and has three children.

Writings

• L -functions and random matrices. In: Björn Engquist, Wilfried Schmid (Eds. ): Mathematics unlimited - 2001 and beyond. Springer Verlag, 2001, online.
• Notes on L -functions and Random Matrix Theory. inter alia, in Pierre Cartier (Editor): Frontiers in Number Theory, Physics and Geometry. Springer Verlag, Volume 1, 2006, pp. 107-162.
• The Riemann Hypothesis. Notices AMS, March 2003.