Lillian Beatrix Pierce is a mathematician whose research connects

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, "Mat ...

with harmonic analysis. She is a professor of mathematics at Duke University.

Early life and education

Pierce was

home-schooled Homeschooling or home schooling, also known as home education or elective home education (EHE), is the education of school-aged children at home or a variety of places other than a school. Usually conducted by a parent, tutor, or an onlin ...

Fallbrook, California Fallbrook is a CDP in northern San Diego County, California. Fallbrook had a population of 30,534 at the 2010 census, up from 29,100 at the 2000 census. Fallbrook's downtown is not on a major highway route. It is west of Interstate 15 or n ...

and began playing the

violin The violin, sometimes known as a '' fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone ( string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument ( soprano) in the family in regu ...

at age four. By age 11 she began performing professionally as a violinist. As a teenager, she also started taking classes at a local

community college A community college is a type of educational institution. The term can have different meanings in different countries: many community colleges have an "open enrollment" for students who have graduated from high school (also known as senior se ...

, accumulating so many units that some of the universities she applied to refused to consider her for freshman admission. She entered

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

majoring in mathematics but intending to pursue an

MD–PhD The Doctorate of Medicine and of Philosophy (MD–PhD) is a dual doctoral degree for physician–scientists, combining the professional training of the Doctor of Medicine degree with the research expertise of the Doctor of Philosophy degree; the ...

program; under the influence of faculty mentor and undergraduate thesis supervisor

Elias M. Stein Elias Menachem Stein (January 13, 1931 – December 23, 2018) was an American mathematician who was a leading figure in the field of harmonic analysis. He was the Albert Baldwin Dod Professor of Mathematics, Emeritus, at Princeton University, w ...

, her interests shifted towards pure mathematics. As an undergraduate, she also became an intern at the

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collect ...

. She was Princeton's 2002

valedictorian Valedictorian is an academic title for the highest-performing student of a graduating class of an academic institution. The valedictorian is commonly determined by a numerical formula, generally an academic institution's grade point average (GPA ...

and became a Rhodes Scholar, repeating two accomplishments of her brother Niles Pierce from nine years earlier. She earned a master's degree at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

in 2004. Returning to Princeton for doctoral study in mathematics, she completed her Ph.D. in 2009. Her dissertation, ''Discrete Analogues in Harmonic Analysis'', was supervised by Stein.

Career

After postdoctoral studies with

Roger Heath-Brown David Rodney "Roger" Heath-Brown FRS (born 12 October 1952), is a British mathematician working in the field of analytic number theory. Education He was an undergraduate and graduate student of Trinity College, Cambridge; his research supervi ...

at Oxford and at the

Hausdorff Center for Mathematics The Hausdorff Center for Mathematics (HCM) is a research center in Bonn, formed by the four mathematical institutes of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn (Mathematical Institute, Institute for Applied Mathematics, Institute for ...

in Bonn, Germany, she became an assistant professor at Duke in 2014.

Research

Pierce was one of the first mathematicians to prove nontrivial

upper bound In mathematics, particularly in order theory, an upper bound or majorant of a subset of some preordered set is an element of that is greater than or equal to every element of . Dually, a lower bound or minorant of is defined to be an eleme ...

s on the number of elements of finite order in an

ideal class group In number theory, the ideal class group (or class group) of an algebraic number field is the quotient group where is the group of fractional ideals of the ring of integers of , and is its subgroup of principal ideals. The class group is a mea ...

Awards and honors

Pierce won the 2018

Sadosky Prize The AWM–Sadosky Prize in Analysis is a prize given every other year by the Association for Women in Mathematics to an outstanding young female researcher in mathematical analysis. It was established in 2012, and is named after Cora Sadosky, a math ...

for research that "spans and connects a broad spectrum of problems ranging from

character sum In mathematics, a character sum is a sum \sum \chi(n) of values of a Dirichlet character χ '' modulo'' ''N'', taken over a given range of values of ''n''. Such sums are basic in a number of questions, for example in the distribution of quadratic ...

s in number theory to

singular integral operators In mathematics, singular integrals are central to harmonic analysis and are intimately connected with the study of partial differential equations. Broadly speaking a singular integral is an integral operator : T(f)(x) = \int K(x,y)f(y) \, dy, w ...

in Euclidean spaces" including in particular "a polynomial Carleson theorem for manifolds". She received the 2019

Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers The Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) is the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on outstanding scientists and engineers in the early stages of their independent research careers. The White ...

. She was elected 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, ...

in the class of 2021 "for contributions to number theory and harmonic analysis".

Personal life

Her husband, Tobias Overath, also works at Duke as a neuroscientist.

References

External links

Home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pierce, Lillian Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century American mathematicians American women mathematicians Women violinists Princeton University alumni American Rhodes Scholars Alumni of the University of Oxford Duke University faculty 21st-century women mathematicians 21st-century American violinists 21st-century American women musicians Fellows of the American Mathematical Society