Mathematician Don Zagier has been awarded the Fudan-Zhongzhi Science Award 2021. Prof. Zagier is one of the renowned scientists whom work in Trieste is supported by SISSA programme for collaborations of excellence. Through this programme, which focuses on research and education, SISSA promotes the presence of Italian and foreign scientists of renowned scientific and cultural level as well as refugee scientists. Prof. Zagier is also a “Distinguished affiliated members” of IGAP, the joint ICTP-SISSA venture aiming to fill the gap between Geometers and Physicists.
Prof. Zagier shares the prestigious prize with Benedict Gross, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University and the University of California, San Diego, for their formulation and proof of the Gross-Zagier formula. Zagier has been also recognized “for his profound work on modular forms and special functions which resolve questions and problems in diverse areas ranging from topology and moduli spaces to geometry and mathematical physics”.
With an international education, Don Zagier obtained two bachelor degrees from MIT at 16 and a PhD from Oxford at 20. He has been one of the directors of the Max Planck Institut für Mathematik in Bonn and professor at the College de France in Paris. He is now Distinguished Staff Associate at ICTP and member of the National Academy of Sciences and many other prestigious organizations.
(Image by Grigory Merzon)