Sun Zhihong (, born October 16, 1965) is a Chinese

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 ...

, working primarily on

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 ...

, combinatorics, and

graph theory In mathematics, graph theory is the study of ''graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are conn ...

. Sun and his twin brother

Sun Zhiwei Sun Zhiwei (, born October 16, 1965) is a Chinese mathematician, working primarily in number theory, combinatorics, and group theory. He is a professor at Nanjing University. Biography Sun Zhiwei was born in Huai'an, Jiangsu. Sun and his twin ...

proved a theorem about what are now known as the

Wall–Sun–Sun prime In number theory, a Wall–Sun–Sun prime or Fibonacci–Wieferich prime is a certain kind of prime number which is conjectured to exist, although none are known. Definition Let p be a prime number. When each term in the sequence of Fibonac ...

s that guided the search for counterexamples to

Fermat's Last Theorem In number theory, Fermat's Last Theorem (sometimes called Fermat's conjecture, especially in older texts) states that no three positive integers , , and satisfy the equation for any integer value of greater than 2. The cases and have been ...

External links

Zhi-Hong Sun's homepage
1965 births Living people Mathematicians from Jiangsu 20th-century Chinese mathematicians 21st-century Chinese mathematicians Number theorists Huaiyin Normal University faculty Scientists from Huai'an Educators from Huai'an Chinese twins {{Asia-mathematician-stub