Robert John McCann is a Canadian

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 ...

, known for his work in transportation theory. He has worked as a professor at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

since 1998, and as Canada Research Chair in Mathematics, Economics, and Physics since 2020.

Life and work

McCann was raised in

Windsor, Ontario Windsor is a city in southwestern Ontario, Canada, on the south bank of the Detroit River directly across from Detroit, Michigan, United States. Geographically located within but administratively independent of Essex County, it is the souther ...

. He studied engineering and physics at

Queen's University Queen's or Queens University may refer to: *Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario, Canada *Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK **Queen's University of Belfast (UK Parliament constituency) (1918–1950) **Queen's University of Belfast ...

before graduating with a degree in math, and earned a PhD in mathematics 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 ...

in 1994. McCann was a Tamarkin Assistant Professor at

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

from 1994, before joining the University of Toronto Department of Mathematics in the fall of 1998. He served as editor-in-chief of the ''

Canadian Journal of Mathematics The ''Canadian Journal of Mathematics'' (french: Journal canadien de mathématiques) is a bimonthly mathematics journal published by the Canadian Mathematical Society. It was established in 1949 by H. S. M. Coxeter and G. de B. Robinson. The cur ...

'' from 2007 to 2016, and again since 2022. 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 Seoul in 2014. He 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 2012, of the Royal Society of Canada in 2014, of the Fields Institute in 2015 and of the Canadian Mathematical Society in 2020. He invented the displacement interpolation between probability measures and studied the convexity of various entropies and energies along it, later linking these to Ricci curvature and eventually to the Einstein equations of general relativity. He has pioneered applications of optimal transport to economic problems such as hedonic matching, investment to match, and multidimensional screening.

References

External links

* * Year of birth missing (living people) Applied mathematicians Living people 20th-century Canadian mathematicians 21st-century Canadian mathematicians Brown University faculty Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Mathematical economists Mathematical physicists People from Windsor, Ontario Princeton University alumni Queen's University at Kingston alumni Academic staff of the University of Toronto {{mathematician-stub