Jacob Fox (born Jacob Licht in 1984) is an American mathematician. He is a professor at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. His research interests are in Hungarian-style

combinatorics Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and an end in obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many appl ...

, particularly

Ramsey theory Ramsey theory, named after the British mathematician and philosopher Frank P. Ramsey, is a branch of mathematics that focuses on the appearance of order in a substructure given a structure of a known size. Problems in Ramsey theory typically ask a ...

extremal graph theory Extremal graph theory is a branch of combinatorics, itself an area of mathematics, that lies at the intersection of extremal combinatorics and graph theory. In essence, extremal graph theory studies how global properties of a graph influence local ...

combinatorial number theory Number theory (or arithmetic or higher arithmetic in older usage) is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and integer-valued functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) said, "Math ...

, and probabilistic methods in combinatorics. Fox grew up in

West Hartford, Connecticut West Hartford is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States, west of downtown Hartford. The population was 64,083 at the 2020 census. The town's popular downtown area is colloquially known as "West Hartford Center," or simply "The C ...

and attended Hall High School. As a senior he won second place overall and first place in his category in the annual

Intel Science Talent Search The Regeneron Science Talent Search, known for its first 57 years as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, and then as the Intel Science Talent Search (Intel STS) from 1998 through 2016, is a research-based science competition in the United Sta ...

, also winning the Karl Menger Memorial Prize of the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

for his project. The project was titled "Rainbow Ramsey Theory: Rainbow Arithmetic Progressions and Anti-Ramsey Results" and was based on a research project he did at a six-week summer camp in mathematics at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(MIT); he also participated in an earlier high school mathematics program at

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

. Fox became an undergraduate at MIT, and was awarded the 2006

Morgan Prize :''Distinguish from the De Morgan Medal awarded by the London Mathematical Society.'' The Morgan Prize (full name Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student) is an annual award given to an un ...

for several research publications in combinatorics. Fox completed his PhD in 2010 from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

; his dissertation, supervised by

Benny Sudakov Benny Sudakov (born October 1969) is an Israeli mathematician, who works mainly on Hungarian-style combinatorics. He was born in Tbilissi, Georgia, and completed his undergraduate studies at Tbilisi State University in 1990. After emigrating to ...

, was titled ''Ramsey Numbers''. After working in the mathematics department at MIT from 2010 to 2014, he joined the faculty of

in 2015. In 2010, Fox was awarded the Dénes Kőnig Prize, an early-career award of the

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific socie ...

Activity Group on Discrete Mathematics. He was an invited speaker at the

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the Nevanlinna Prize (to be rename ...

in 2014. He was awarded the

Oberwolfach Prize The Oberwolfach Research Institute for Mathematics (german: Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach) is a center for mathematical research in Oberwolfach, Germany. It was founded by mathematician Wilhelm Süss in 1944. It organizes weekl ...

in 2016.

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* 1984 births Living people 21st-century American mathematicians Combinatorialists Princeton University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science faculty Stanford University faculty People from West Hartford, Connecticut Recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers {{US-mathematician-stub