Preda V. Mihăilescu (born 23 May 1955) is a Romanian mathematician, best known for his proof of the 158-year-old

Catalan's conjecture Catalan's conjecture (or Mihăilescu's theorem) is a theorem in number theory that was Conjecture, conjectured by the mathematician Eugène Charles Catalan in 1844 and proven in 2002 by Preda Mihăilescu at Paderborn University. The integers 2 ...

Biography

Born in

Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...

,Stewart 2013 he is the brother of

Vintilă Mihăilescu Vintilă Mihăilescu (23 May 1951 – 22 March 2020) was a leading Romanian cultural anthropologist, and a professor at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration. He was the brother of mathematician Preda Mihăilescu. ...

. After leaving Romania in 1973, he settled in

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

. He studied mathematics and computer science in

Zürich Zürich () is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zürich. It is located in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zürich. As of January 2020, the municipality has 43 ...

, receiving a PhD from

ETH Zürich (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , ac ...

in 1997. His PhD thesis, titled ''Cyclotomy of rings and primality testing'', was written under the direction of Erwin Engeler and

Hendrik Lenstra Hendrik Willem Lenstra Jr. (born 16 April 1949, Zaandam) is a Dutch mathematician. Biography Lenstra received his doctorate from the University of Amsterdam in 1977 and became a professor there in 1978. In 1987 he was appointed to the faculty of ...

. For several years, he did research at the

University of Paderborn Paderborn University (german: Universität Paderborn) is one of the fourteen public research universities in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. It was founded in 1972 and 20,308 students were enrolled at the university in the winter ...

, Germany. Since 2005, he has held a professorship at the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...

Major research

In 2002, Mihăilescu proved

.Bilu et al. 2014. This number-theoretical conjecture, formulated by the French and Belgian mathematician

Eugène Charles Catalan Eugène Charles Catalan (30 May 1814 – 14 February 1894) was a French and Belgian mathematician who worked on continued fractions, descriptive geometry, number theory and combinatorics. His notable contributions included discovering a periodic ...

in 1844, had stood unresolved for 158 years. Mihăilescu's proof appeared in ''

Crelle's Journal ''Crelle's Journal'', or just ''Crelle'', is the common name for a mathematics journal, the ''Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik'' (in English: ''Journal for Pure and Applied Mathematics''). History The journal was founded by Augus ...

'' in 2004.

Notes

References

* * * * * * * *

External links

*
Web page at GöttingenFormer Web page at Paderborn (no longer updated)
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Mihailescu, Preda 1955 births Living people 20th-century Romanian mathematicians 21st-century Romanian mathematicians Number theorists 21st-century German mathematicians University of Göttingen faculty ETH Zurich alumni Scientists from Bucharest Romanian emigrants to Switzerland