Preda Mihăilescu
Preda Mihăilescu | |
---|---|
Born |
Bucharest, Romania | May 23, 1955
Nationality | Romanian |
Alma mater | ETH Zürich |
Known for |
proving Catalan's conjecture |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Mathematics |
Institutions | University of Göttingen |
Doctoral advisor |
Erwin Engeler Hendrik Lenstra |
Preda V. Mihăilescu (born May 23, 1955) is a Romanian mathematician, best known for his proof of the 158-year-old Catalan's conjecture.
Biography
Born in Bucharest, he is the brother of Vintilă Mihăilescu.
After leaving Romania in 1973, he settled in Switzerland. He studied mathematics and computer science in Zürich, receiving a Ph.D. from ETH Zürich in 1997. His Ph.D. thesis, titled Cyclotomy of rings and primality testing,[1] was written under the direction of Erwin Engeler and Hendrik Lenstra.
For several years, he did research at the University of Paderborn, Germany. Since 2005, he has held a professorship at the Georg-August University of Göttingen.
Major research results
In 2002, Mihăilescu proved Catalan's conjecture.[2][3][4] This number-theoretical conjecture, formulated by the French and Belgian mathematician Eugène Charles Catalan in 1844, had stood unresolved for 158 years. Mihăilescu's proof appeared in Crelle's Journal in 2004.
In 2009, Mihăilescu announced a proof of Leopoldt's conjecture for all number fields.[5]
Notes
References
- Bilu, Yuri F.; Bugeaud, Yann; Mignotte, Maurice (2014). The Problem of Catalan. Springer. OCLC 893117743.
- Metsänkylä, Tauno (2004). "Catalan's Conjecture: Another old Diophantine problem solved" (PDF). Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 41: 43–57. doi:10.1090/s0273-0979-03-00993-5. MR 2015449.
- Mihăilescu, Preda (1997). Cyclotomy of rings and primality testing (Ph.D. thesis). ETH Zurich. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04.
- Mihăilescu, Preda (2005). Reflection, Bernoulli Numbers and the Proof of Catalan’s Conjecture. European Congress of Mathematics. Stockholm, Sweden: Eur. Math. Soc. pp. 325–340. doi:10.4171/009-1/21. MR 2185753.
- Mihăilescu, Preda (2009). The T and T* components of Λ – modules and Leopoldt's conjecture (Technical report). arXiv:0905.1274. Bibcode:2009arXiv0905.1274M.
- Schoof, René (2008). Catalan's Conjecture. Universitext. Springer. OCLC 656399081.