Location
Age
Area of FocusAbout Benedict's Work
Benedict Gross is a mathematician who has contributed decisively to number theory, algebraic geometry, modular forms and group representations.
Gross has investigated the special values and derivatives of L-series modular forms and has helped to obtain a limit formula using canonical heights on curves. This limit formula offers a new approach to the classical problem of finding the solutions of cubic equations. His work also has led to the resolution of a problem on the class numbers of quadratic fields, which dates back to the nineteenth-century mathematician, Karl Friedrich Gauss.
Biography
In addition to his numerous journal publications, Gross is the author of Arithmetic on Elliptical Curves with Complex Multiplication (2000) and co-author of The Magic of Numbers (2004), based on his course in quantitative reasoning, which provides a readable introduction to the patterns that emerge in number behavior and the often surprising applications of those patterns. Gross has held teaching appointments at Princeton University (1978-1982), Brown University (1982-1985) and since 1985, at Harvard University. He is the George Vassmer Leverett Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University and became the Dean of Harvard College in 2003.
Gross received a B.A. (1971) and a Ph.D. (1978) from Harvard University, and a M.Sc. (1974) from the University of Oxford.
Last updated January 1, 2005.
Published on August 1, 1986
