Ben Green (mathematician)

Ben Joseph Green FRS (born 27 February 1977) is a

British mathematician, specialising in combinatorics Ben Green
and number theory. He is the Waynflete Professor of
Pure Mathematics at the University of Oxford.

Early life and education

Ben Green was born on 27 February 1977 in Bristol,
England. He studied at local schools in Bristol, Bishop
Road Primary School and Fairfield Grammar School,
competing in the International Mathematical
Olympiad in 1994 and 1995.[1] He entered Trinity
College, Cambridge in 1995 and completed his BA in
Green in 2010
mathematics in 1998, winning the Senior Wrangler
title. He stayed on for Part III and earned his doctorate Born Ben Joseph Green
under the supervision of Timothy Gowers, with a 27 February 1977
thesis entitled Topics in arithmetic combinatorics Bristol, England
(2003). During his PhD he spent a year as a visiting Alma mater Trinity College, Cambridge
student at Princeton University. He was a research (BA, MMath, PhD)
Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge between 2001 Awards Clay Research Award (2004)
and 2005, before becoming a Professor of Salem Prize (2005)
Mathematics at the University of Bristol from January Whitehead Prize (2005)
2005 to September 2006 and then the first Herchel SASTRA Ramanujan Prize (2007)
Smith Professor of Pure Mathematics at the University EMS Prize (2008)
of Cambridge from September 2006 to August 2013. Fellow of the Royal Society (2010)
He became the Waynflete Professor of Pure Sylvester Medal (2014)
Mathematics at the University of Oxford on 1 August Senior Whitehead Prize (2019)
2013. He was also a Research Fellow of the Clay
Scientific career
Mathematics Institute and held various positions at
institutes such as Princeton University, University of Fields Mathematics
British Columbia, and Massachusetts Institute of Institutions University of Bristol
Technology. University of Cambridge
University of Oxford
Princeton University
Mathematics University of British Columbia
Massachusetts Institute of
The majority of Green's research is in the fields of Technology
analytic number theory and additive combinatorics, Thesis Topics in Arithmetic
but he also has results in harmonic analysis and in Combinatorics (2003)
group theory. His best known theorem, proved jointly
with his frequent collaborator Terence Tao, states that Doctoral Timothy Gowers
there exist arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions in advisor
the prime numbers: this is now known as the Green– Doctoral Adam Harper
Tao theorem.[2] students Vicky Neale
Amongst Green's early results in additive Lilian Matthiesen
combinatorics are an improvement of a result of Jean
Bourgain of the size of arithmetic progressions in sumsets,[3] as well as a proof of the Cameron–Erdős
conjecture on sum-free sets of natural numbers.[4] He also proved an arithmetic regularity lemma[5] for
functions defined on the first natural numbers, somewhat analogous to the Szemerédi regularity lemma
for graphs.

From 2004–2010, in joint work with Terence Tao and Tamar Ziegler, he developed so-called higher order
Fourier analysis. This theory relates Gowers norms with objects known as nilsequences. The theory
derives its name from these nilsequences, which play an analogous role to the role that characters play in
classical Fourier analysis. Green and Tao used higher order Fourier analysis to present a new method for
counting the number of solutions to simultaneous equations in certain sets of integers, including in the
primes.[6] This generalises the classical approach using Hardy–Littlewood circle method. Many aspects
of this theory, including the quantitative aspects of the inverse theorem for the Gowers norms,[7] are still
the subject of ongoing research.

Green has also collaborated with Emmanuel Breuillard on topics in group theory. In particular, jointly
with Terence Tao, they proved a structure theorem[8] for approximate groups, generalising the Freiman-
Ruzsa theorem on sets of integers with small doubling. Green also has worked, jointly with Kevin Ford
and Sean Eberhard, on the theory of the symmetric group, in particular on what proportion of its elements
fix a set of size .[9]

Green and Tao also have a paper[10] on algebraic combinatorial geometry, resolving the Dirac-Motzkin
conjecture (see Sylvester–Gallai theorem). In particular they prove that, given any collection of points
in the plane that are not all collinear, if is large enough then there must exist at least lines in the
plane containing exactly two of the points.

Kevin Ford, Ben Green, Sergei Konyagin, James Maynard and Terence Tao, initially in two separate
research groups and then in combination, improved the lower bound for the size of the longest gap
between two consecutive primes of size at most .[11] The form of the previously best-known bound,
essentially due to Rankin, had not been improved for 76 years.

More recently Green has considered questions in arithmetic Ramsey theory. Together with Tom Sanders
he proved that, if a sufficiently large finite field of prime order is coloured with a fixed number of
colours, then the field has elements such that all have the same colour.[12]
Green has also been involved with the new developments of Croot-Lev-Pach-Ellenberg-Gijswijt on
applying the polynomial method to bound the size of subsets of a finite vector space without solutions to
linear equations. He adapted these methods to prove, in function fields, a strong version of Sárközy's
theorem.[13]

Awards and honours

Green has been a Fellow of the Royal Society since 2010,[14] and a Fellow of the American Mathematical
Society since 2012.[15] Green was chosen by the German Mathematical Society to deliver a Gauss
Lectureship in 2013. He has received several awards:

2004: Clay Research Award

2005: Salem Prize
2005: Whitehead Prize[16]
2007: SASTRA Ramanujan Prize
2008: European Mathematical Society prize recipient
2014: Sylvester Medal, awarded by the Royal Society.
2019: Senior Whitehead Prize of the London Mathematical Society

References
1. Ben Green's results (https://www.imo-official.org/participant_r.aspx?id=1137) at International
Mathematical Olympiad
2. Green, Ben; Tao, Terence (2008). "The Primes Contain Arbitrarily Long Arithmetic
Progressions". Annals of Mathematics. 167 (2): 481–547. arXiv:math/0404188 (https://arxiv.
org/abs/math/0404188). doi:10.4007/annals.2008.167.481 (https://doi.org/10.4007%2Fannal
s.2008.167.481). JSTOR 40345354 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/40345354).
S2CID 1883951 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:1883951).
3. Green, B. (1 August 2002). "Arithmetic progressions in sumsets". Geometric & Functional
Analysis. 12 (3): 584–597. doi:10.1007/s00039-002-8258-4 (https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs00
039-002-8258-4). ISSN 1016-443X (https://search.worldcat.org/issn/1016-443X).
S2CID 120755105 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:120755105).
4. GREEN, BEN (19 October 2004). "The Cameron–Erdos Conjecture". Bulletin of the London
Mathematical Society. 36 (6): 769–778. arXiv:math/0304058 (https://arxiv.org/abs/math/030
4058). doi:10.1112/s0024609304003650 (https://doi.org/10.1112%2Fs0024609304003650).
ISSN 0024-6093 (https://search.worldcat.org/issn/0024-6093). S2CID 119615076 (https://ap
i.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:119615076).
5. Green, B. (1 April 2005). "A Szemerédi-type regularity lemma in abelian groups, with
applications". Geometric & Functional Analysis. 15 (2): 340–376. arXiv:math/0310476 (http
s://arxiv.org/abs/math/0310476). doi:10.1007/s00039-005-0509-8 (https://doi.org/10.1007%2
Fs00039-005-0509-8). ISSN 1016-443X (https://search.worldcat.org/issn/1016-443X).
S2CID 17451915 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:17451915).
6. Green, Benjamin; Tao, Terence (2010). "Linear equations in primes" (https://doi.org/10.400
7%2Fannals.2010.171.1753). Annals of Mathematics. 171 (3): 1753–1850.
arXiv:math/0606088 (https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0606088).
doi:10.4007/annals.2010.171.1753 (https://doi.org/10.4007%2Fannals.2010.171.1753).
JSTOR 20752252 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/20752252).
 7. Green, Ben; Tao, Terence; Ziegler, Tamar (2012). "An inverse theorem for the Gowers U s+1
[N]-norm" (https://doi.org/10.4007%2Fannals.2012.176.2.11). Annals of Mathematics. 176
(2): 1231–1372. arXiv:1006.0205 (https://arxiv.org/abs/1006.0205).
doi:10.4007/annals.2012.176.2.11 (https://doi.org/10.4007%2Fannals.2012.176.2.11).
JSTOR 23350588 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/23350588).
8. Breuillard, Emmanuel; Green, Ben; Tao, Terence (1 November 2012). "The structure of
approximate groups". Publications Mathématiques de l'IHÉS. 116 (1): 115–221.
arXiv:1110.5008 (https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.5008). doi:10.1007/s10240-012-0043-9 (https://
doi.org/10.1007%2Fs10240-012-0043-9). ISSN 0073-8301 (https://search.worldcat.org/issn/
0073-8301). S2CID 119603959 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:119603959).
9. Eberhard, Sean; Ford, Kevin; Green, Ben (23 December 2015). "Permutations Fixing a k-
set". International Mathematics Research Notices. 2016 (21): 6713–6731. arXiv:1507.04465
(https://arxiv.org/abs/1507.04465). Bibcode:2015arXiv150704465E (https://ui.adsabs.harvar
d.edu/abs/2015arXiv150704465E). doi:10.1093/imrn/rnv371 (https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fimr
n%2Frnv371). ISSN 1073-7928 (https://search.worldcat.org/issn/1073-7928).
S2CID 15188628 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:15188628).
10. Green, Ben; Tao, Terence (1 September 2013). "On Sets Defining Few Ordinary Lines".
Discrete & Computational Geometry. 50 (2): 409–468. arXiv:1208.4714 (https://arxiv.org/ab
s/1208.4714). doi:10.1007/s00454-013-9518-9 (https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs00454-013-951
8-9). ISSN 0179-5376 (https://search.worldcat.org/issn/0179-5376). S2CID 15813230 (http
s://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:15813230).
11. Ford, Kevin; Green, Ben; Konyagin, Sergei; Maynard, James; Tao, Terence (16 December
2014). "Long gaps between primes". arXiv:1412.5029 (https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.5029)
[math.NT (https://arxiv.org/archive/math.NT)].
12. Green, Ben; Sanders, Tom (1 March 2016). "Monochromatic sums and products". Discrete
Analysis. 5202016 (1). arXiv:1510.08733 (https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.08733).
doi:10.19086/da.613 (https://doi.org/10.19086%2Fda.613). ISSN 2397-3129 (https://search.
worldcat.org/issn/2397-3129). S2CID 119140038 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:
119140038).
13. Green, Ben (23 November 2016). "Sárközy's Theorem in Function Fields". The Quarterly
Journal of Mathematics. 68 (1): 237–242. arXiv:1605.07263 (https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.0726
3). doi:10.1093/qmath/haw044 (https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fqmath%2Fhaw044). ISSN 0033-
5606 (https://search.worldcat.org/issn/0033-5606). S2CID 119150134 (https://api.semantics
cholar.org/CorpusID:119150134).
14. "- Royal Society" (http://royalsociety.org/people/ben-green/).
15. List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society (http://www.ams.org/profession/fellows
-list). Retrieved 19 January 2013.
16. "List of LMS prize winners – London Mathematical Society" (http://www.lms.ac.uk/content/lis
t-lms-prize-winners#Whitehead_Prize).

External links
Ben Green personal homepage at Oxford (http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/greenbj/)
Ben Green faculty page at Oxford (https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/contact/details/greenbj)
Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20140426113144/https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/contac
t/details/greenbj) 26 April 2014 at the Wayback Machine
Ben Green Homepage at Trinity College, Cambridge (http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/index.php?p
ageid=176&conid=155)
Clay Research Award 2004 announcement (http://www.claymath.org/research)
Ben Green (https://mathgenealogy.org/id.php?id=76979) at the Mathematics Genealogy
Project
 math.NT/0404188 – Preprint on arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions on primes (https://ar
xiv.org/abs/math.NT/0404188)

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ben_Green_(mathematician)&oldid=1240335627"