Residence Germany Fields Mathematics Known for Sphere-packing problem | Field Mathematics | |
Thesis Modular Functions and Special Cycles (2013) Institutions Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin Mathematical School, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Similar Don Zagier, Peter Scholze, Simon Brendle, Ana Caraiani |
Maryna viazovska cm values of regularized theta lifts
Maryna Sergiivna Viazovska (Ukrainian: Марина Сергіївна В'язовська; born 1984) is a Ukrainian mathematician who in 2016 solved the sphere-packing problem in dimension 8 and, in collaboration with others, in dimension 24. Previously, the problem had been solved only for three or fewer dimensions, and the proof of the three-dimensional version (the Kepler conjecture) involved long computer calculations. In contrast, Viazovska's proof for 8 and 24 dimensions is "stunningly simple".
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As a student at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Viazovska competed at the International Mathematics Competition for University Students in 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005, and was one of the first-place winners in 2002 and 2005. Viazovska earned a candidate degree from the Institute of Mathematics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 2010, and a doctorate (Dr. rer. nat.) from the University of Bonn in 2013. Her doctoral dissertation, Modular Functions and Special Cycles, concerns analytic number theory and was supervised by Don Zagier. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the Berlin Mathematical School and the Humboldt University of Berlin. In December 2016, she was named as Tenure Track Assistant Professor at EPFL.

As well as for her work on sphere packing, Viazovska is also known for her research on spherical designs with Bondarenko and Radchenko. With them she proved a conjecture of Korevaar and Meyers on the existence of small designs in arbitrary dimensions. This result was one of the contributions for which her co-author Andriy Bondarenko won the Vasil A. Popov Prize for approximation theory in 2013. In 2016 she received the Salem Prize for her work on sphere packing and modular forms.

Selected publications

