Shou Wu Zhang

Education

Shou-Wu Zhang was born in Hexian, Ma'anshan, Anhui, China on October 9, 1962. He was admitted to the Sun Yat-sen University chemistry department in 1980; he later transferred to the mathematics department of the same institution. He received his bachelor's degree in 1983.

After Zhang received his master's degree from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1986, he studied under Lucien Szpiro and Gerd Faltings at Columbia University and Princeton University, completing his PhD in 1991. He was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study and an assistant professor at Princeton University from 1991 to 1996. Zhang has been tenured at Columbia University since 1996 and at Princeton University since 2011. Zhang has been a Changjiang Chair Professor at Tsinghua University since 2000 and an L.-K. Hua Chair Professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences since 2001.

Research

Zhang's main contributions to number theory and arithmetical algebraic geometry are his theory of positive line bundles in Arakelov theory, which he used to prove (along with E. Ullmo) the Bogomolov conjecture, and his generalization of the Gross–Zagier theorem from elliptic curves to abelian varieties of GL(2) type over totally real fields. In particular, the latter result led him to a proof of the rank one Birch-Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture for abelian varieties of GL(2) type over totally real fields. He has also developed the theory of arithmetic dynamics.

Awards

Zhang has received a Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship (1997) and a Morningside Gold Medal of Mathematics (1998). He is also a Clay Foundation Prize Fellow (2003), Guggenheim Foundation Fellow (2009), Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2011), and Fellow of the American Mathematical Society (2016). He was also an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1998.