Kaisa Sofia Matomäki (born April 30, 1985) is a

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

specializing in

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 arithmetic function, integer-valued functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777� ...

. Since September 2015, she has been working as an Academic Research Fellow in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics,

University of Turku sv, Åbo universitet , latin_name = Universitas Aboensis , image_name = University of Turku.svg , motto = ''Vapaan kansan lahja vapaalle tieteelle'' , established = 1920 , type ...

Turku Turku ( ; ; sv, Åbo, ) is a city and former capital on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River, in the region of Finland Proper (''Varsinais-Suomi'') and the former Turku and Pori Province (''Turun ja Porin lääni''; ...

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

. Her research includes results on the distribution of

multiplicative function In number theory, a multiplicative function is an arithmetic function ''f''(''n'') of a positive integer ''n'' with the property that ''f''(1) = 1 and f(ab) = f(a)f(b) whenever ''a'' and ''b'' are coprime. An arithmetic function ''f''(''n'') is ...

s over short intervals of numbers; for instance, she showed that the values of the

Möbius function The Möbius function is a multiplicative function in number theory introduced by the German mathematician August Ferdinand Möbius (also transliterated ''Moebius'') in 1832. It is ubiquitous in elementary and analytic number theory and most oft ...

are evenly divided between +1 and −1 over short intervals. These results, in turn, were among the tools used by

Terence Tao Terence Chi-Shen Tao (; born 17 July 1975) is an Australian-American mathematician. He is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he holds the James and Carol Collins chair. His research includes ...

to prove the

Erdős discrepancy problem In mathematics, a sign sequence, or ±1–sequence or bipolar sequence, is a sequence of numbers, each of which is either 1 or −1. One example is the sequence (1, −1, 1, −1, ...). Such sequences are commonly studied in discrepancy theory ...

Awards and honors

Kaisa Matomäki, along with Maksym Radziwill of

McGill University McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill Universit ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

, was awarded the

SASTRA Ramanujan Prize The SASTRA Ramanujan Prize, founded by Shanmugha Arts, Science, Technology & Research Academy (SASTRA) located near Kumbakonam, India, Srinivasa Ramanujan's hometown, is awarded every year to a young mathematician judged to have done outstanding ...

for 2016. The Prize was established in 2005 and is awarded annually for outstanding contributions by young mathematicians to areas influenced by

Srinivasa Ramanujan Srinivasa Ramanujan (; born Srinivasa Ramanujan Aiyangar, ; 22 December 188726 April 1920) was an Indian mathematician. Though he had almost no formal training in pure mathematics, he made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis ...

. The citation for the 2016 SASTRA Ramanujan Prize is as follows: "Kaisa Matomäki and Maksym Radziwill are jointly awarded the 2016 SASTRA Ramanujan Prize for their deep and far reaching contributions to several important problems in diverse areas of number theory and especially for their spectacular collaboration which is revolutionizing the subject. The prize recognizes that in making significant improvements over the works of earlier stalwarts on long standing problems, they have introduced a number of innovative techniques. The prize especially recognizes their collaboration starting with their 2015 joint paper in Geometric and Functional Analysis which led to their 2016 paper in the Annals of Mathematics in which they obtain amazing results on multiplicative functions in short intervals, and in particular a stunning result on the parity of the Liouville lambda function on almost all short intervals - a paper that is expected to change the subject of multiplicative functions in a major way. The prize notes also the very recent joint paper of Matomäki, Radziwill and Tao announcing a significant advance in the case ''k'' = 3 towards a conjecture of Chowla on the values of the lambda function on sets of ''k'' consecutive integers. Finally the prize notes, that Matomäki and Radziwill, through their impressive array of deep results and the powerful new techniques they have introduced, will strongly influence the development of analytic number theory in the future." With Radziwill, she is one of five winners of the 2019 New Horizons Prize for Early-Career Achievement in Mathematics, associated with the

Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics The Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics is an annual award of the Breakthrough Prize series announced in 2013. It is funded by Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckerberg and others. The annual award comes with a cash gift of $3 million. The Breakthrough Prize ...

. She is one of the 2020 winners of the

EMS Prize The European Mathematical Society (EMS) is a European organization dedicated to the development of mathematics in Europe. Its members are different mathematical societies in Europe, academic institutions and individual mathematicians. The current ...

. She was awarded the 2021 Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize by 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 her work (much of it joint with Maksym Radziwiłł) opening up the field of multiplicative functions in short intervals in a completely unexpected and very fruitful way, and in particular in their breakthrough paper, 'Multiplicative Functions in Short Intervals' (

Annals of Mathematics The ''Annals of Mathematics'' is a mathematical journal published every two months by Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study. History The journal was established as ''The Analyst'' in 1874 and with Joel E. Hendricks as the ...

183 2016, 1015–1056)." For 2023 she received the

Cole Prize The Frank Nelson Cole Prize, or Cole Prize for short, is one of twenty-two prizes awarded to mathematicians by the American Mathematical Society, one for an outstanding contribution to algebra, and the other for an outstanding contribution to number ...

in Number Theory of the AMS. She was elected to the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of Humanities, Letters, Law, and Sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europea ...

in 2021.

Education and career

Kaisa Matomäki was born in

Nakkila Nakkila () is a municipality of Finland. It is located in the province of Western Finland and is part of the Satakunta region, southeast of Pori. The Kokemäki River flows along the center of Nakkila. The municipality has a population of () and c ...

, Finland, on 30 April 1985. She attended high school in

Valkeakoski Valkeakoski (; lit. "white rapids") is a town and municipality in Finland. It is located south of Tampere, north of Hämeenlinna and north of Helsinki in the Pirkanmaa region. The municipality has a population of () and covers an area of of wh ...

, Finland and won the First Prize in the national mathematics competition for Finnish high school students. She did her Masters at the University of Turku and received the Ernst Lindelof Award for the best Masters Thesis in mathematics in Finland in 2005. After completing her PhD at the Royal Holloway College of the University of London in 2009 under the direction of Professor Glyn Harman, she returned to Turku where she is an Academy Research Fellow.

Personal life

Kaisa Matomäki is married to Pekka Matomäki, who is also a

specializing in

applied mathematics Applied mathematics is the application of mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathematical s ...

. They have three children. Currently they live in

Lieto Lieto (; sv, Lundo) is a a city and municipality of Finland. It is located in the province of Western Finland and is part of the Southwest Finland region. The municipality has a population of () and covers an area of of which is water. The p ...

, close to Turku.

References

External links

Homepage of Kaisa Matomäki
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Matomaki, Kaisa Sofia Living people 1985 births People from Nakkila Number theorists Recipients of the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize Finnish mathematicians Women mathematicians International Mathematical Olympiad participants Members of Academia Europaea