James "Jim" Lepowsky (born July 5, 1944, in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

) is a professor of mathematics at

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was ...

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

. Previously he taught at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

. He received his Ph.D. from

M.I.T. 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 m ...

in 1970 where his advisors were

Bertram Kostant Bertram Kostant (May 24, 1928 – February 2, 2017) was an American mathematician who worked in representation theory, differential geometry, and mathematical physics. Early life and education Kostant grew up in New York City, where he gradua ...

and Sigurdur Helgason. Lepowsky graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1961, 16 years after Kostant. His current research is in the areas of infinite-dimensional

Lie algebras In mathematics, a Lie algebra (pronounced ) is a vector space \mathfrak g together with an Binary operation, operation called the Lie bracket, an Alternating multilinear map, alternating bilinear map \mathfrak g \times \mathfrak g \rightarrow ...

and

vertex algebras In mathematics, a vertex operator algebra (VOA) is an algebraic structure that plays an important role in two-dimensional conformal field theory and string theory. In addition to physical applications, vertex operator algebras have proven usef ...

. He has written several books on vertex algebras and related topics. In 1988, in a joint work with

Igor Frenkel Igor Borisovich Frenkel (russian: Игорь Борисович Френкель; born April 22, 1952) is a Russian-American mathematician at Yale University working in representation theory and mathematical physics. Frenkel emigrated to the Uni ...

and

Arne Meurman Arne Meurman (born 6 April 1956) is a Swedish mathematician working on finite groups and vertex operator algebras. Currently, he is a professor at Lund University. He is best known for constructing the monster vertex algebra The monster vertex a ...

, he constructed the

monster vertex algebra The monster vertex algebra (or moonshine module) is a vertex algebra acted on by the monster group that was constructed by Igor Frenkel, James Lepowsky, and Arne Meurman. R. Borcherds used it to prove the monstrous moonshine conjectures, by ap ...

(also known as the Moonshine module). His PhD students include Stefano Capparelli, Yi-Zhi Huang, Haisheng Li, Arne Meurman, and Antun Milas. In 2012, he became a fellow 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, ...

.List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
retrieved 2013-01-27.

Notes

References

* Igor Frenkel, James Lepowsky, Arne Meurman, "Vertex operator algebras and the Monster". ''Pure and Applied Mathematics, 134.'' Academic Press, Inc., Boston, MA, 1988. liv+508 pp. * Haisheng Li, James Lepowsky, "Introduction To Vertex Operator Algebras And Their Representations ". "Progress in Mathematics." Birkhauser, 2004.

External links

* Stuyvesant High School alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Rutgers University faculty Fellows of the American Mathematical Society 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians 1944 births Living people Mathematicians from New York (state) {{US-mathematician-stub