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American mathematician (1935–2019) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Patrick Ximenes Gallagher (January 2, 1935[1][2] – March 30, 2019)[2][3] was an American mathematician who pioneered large sieve theory and invented the larger sieve.
Patrick X. Gallagher | |
---|---|
Born | Elizabeth, New Jersey, US | January 2, 1935
Died | March 30, 2019 84) | (aged
Alma mater | Harvard University Princeton University |
Known for | large sieve larger sieve |
Awards | Columbia University Presidential Teaching Award (2005) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Mathematics |
Institutions | Columbia University Barnard College Institute for Advanced Study Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
Doctoral advisor | Donald C. Spencer |
Doctoral students | Dorian M. Goldfeld |
Patrick Ximenes Gallagher was born on January 2, 1935, in Elizabeth, New Jersey to school superintendent Ralph P. Gallagher and elementary school teacher Natalie Forcheimer Gallagher.[1][4][5] Gallagher graduated from Bound Brook High School and received a scholarship from the Harvard Club of New Jersey to attend Harvard University.[5][6]
In 1956, Gallagher received a B.A. degree magna cum laude from Harvard University.[7][5] At Harvard, he was a member of the Harvard Mathematics Club and Eliot House Mathematics-Physics Club and completed an undergraduate honors thesis entitled On a property of some entire functions.[6] In 1959, Gallagher received a PhD from Princeton University with a doctoral dissertation entitled Metric Diophantine Approximation in One and Several Dimensions completed under the supervision of Donald C. Spencer.[8]
After receiving his doctoral degree, Gallagher served as an instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1959 to 1961.[1] He spent one year living in the Latin Quarter of Paris before becoming an assistant professor at Columbia University in 1962.[1][9] He moved from Columbia to become a member of the Institute for Advanced Study for the 1964-1965 academic year.[1] From 1965 to 1972, he was an associate professor and then full professor at Barnard College.[1][7]
In 1972, Gallagher moved back to Columbia University as a professor of mathematics.[10][11][1] Gallagher received the Columbia University Presidential Teaching Award in 2005[7] and became director of undergraduate studies in the department of mathematics in 2013.[10][11] He retired from Columbia in 2017 and was professor emeritus until his death in 2019.[3]
In the 1960s and 1970s, Gallagher proved several results in large sieve methods in analytic number theory and simplified key ingredients used in the proof of the Bombieri–Vinogradov theorem.[12][13] He also applied the large sieve to study the asymptotics of Galois groups of monic integral polynomials of bounded height, improving on results by van der Waerden.[14][15]
In 1971, he invented the larger sieve.[16]
Gallagher met his wife, Minh Chau Gallagher, while he was an instructor at MIT in 1960.[9] Minh Chau was born in Hanoi to Roman Catholic parents.[17] They had two sons together.[9]
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