Yitang Zhang

Zhang Yitang called Tom Zhang (Chinese张 益 唐, Pinyin Zhang Yitang; * 1955) is a Chinese mathematician who deals with number theory.

Zhang had been sent with his family during the Cultural Revolution to the country where the parents were doing simple farm worker activities. He earned his bachelor's degree at Peking University, was in 1985 in the United States and was established in 1991 at Tzuong - Tsieng Moh at Purdue University PhD (The Jacobean conjecture and the degree of field extension). He then worked as an accountant before 1999 he was a lecturer ( Lecturer ) at the University of New Hampshire. He held there Analysis lectures, but had until 2013 no tenure ( permanent position for professors at U.S. universities ). 2014 he received a full professorship at the University of New Hampshire.

After his breakthrough in number theory in 2013, where he secretly researched four years, and his colleagues in analytic number theory up to that point was as good as unknown, he has been to numerous guest lectures and research stays invited as the Institute for Advanced Study. He also received offers to professorships in China and is also a professor in New Hampshire received (December 2013).

In 2013 he proved a theorem, which is considered progress in the field of twin prime conjecture. He proved that with difference less than 70 million are infinitely many prime pairs (of Zhang 's view, can the limit even further reduce ). The twin prime conjecture asserts the existence of infinite many pairs with distance 2 Despite the obvious discrepancy, this was seen as a step forward, as it was the first result of this kind. It builds on work by Dan Goldston, Cem Yildirim and Janos Pintz and used techniques of analytic number theory by John B. Friedlander, Enrico Bombieri and Iwaniec Henryk from the 1980s. Since the release of Zhang's article was working on a joint project to optimize the parameters in Zhang's formulas. This allowed the upper limit of 70 million be reduced by December 2013, already 300. However, fundamental barriers have been identified that prevent the lowering of the limit to 2 and therefore a complete proof of the twin prime conjecture with Zhang's approach. With an independent method was able to reduce the limit to 600 in November 2013 James Maynard.

Zhang received the 2013 Ostrowski Prize and in 2014 the Cole Prize for number theory.

Works

  • Yitang Zhang: Bounded gaps in between primes. In: Annals of Mathematics. Volume 179, 2014, pp. 1-54 ( digitized )
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