Background
BAKER, Alan was born on August 19, 1939 in London. Son of Barnet and Bessie Baker.
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Alan Baker
Edit Profilemathematician university professor
Alan Baker, British mathematician. Achievements include research in analytic number theory; research in transcendence theory; research in diophantine approximation and the effective solution of diophantine equations. Recipient Fields Medal, International Mathematics Union Congress, Nice, 1970; fellow, Trinity College, since 1964.
Education
Bachelor of Science, University College London. Master of Arts, Trinity College Cambridge. Doctor of Philosophy, Trinity College Cambridge, 1965.
Career
He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1970, at age 31. His academic career started as a student of Harold Davenport, at University College London and later at Cambridge. He was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in the fall of 1970.
He is a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
His interests are in number theory, transcendence, logarithmic form, effective methods, Diophantine geometry and Diophantine analysis. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
Baker generalized the Gelfond–Schneider Theorem, itself a solution to Hilbert"s seventh problem. Specifically, Baker showed that if are algebraic numbers (besides 0 or 1), and if are irrational algebraic numbers such that the set are linearly independent over the rational numbers, then the number is transcendental.
Achievements
Membership
Royal Society; American Mathematical Society. Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
