Tadashi Tokieda (Japanese: 時枝正; born 1968) is a Japanese

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 in

mathematical physics Mathematical physics refers to the development of mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The '' Journal of Mathematical Physics'' defines the field as "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and the developme ...

. He is a professor of mathematics at Stanford University; previously he was a fellow and Director of Studies of Mathematicspersonal homepage
at Trinity Hall at Trinity Hall,

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...

. He is also very active in inventing, collecting, and studying toys that uniquely reveal and explore real-world surprises of mathematics and physics. In comparison with most mathematicians, he had an unusual path in life: he started as a painter, and then became a classical

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...

, before switching to mathematics.bio
at the ''Modern Mathematics'' International summer school for students

Life and career

Tokieda was born in Tokyo and grew up to be a painter. He then studied at Lycée Sainte-Marie Grand Lebrun in

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

as a classical

. According to his personal homepage, he taught himself basic mathematics from Russian collections of problems. He is a 1989 classics graduate from

Sophia University Sophia University (Japanese: 上智大学, ''Jōchi Daigaku''; Latin: ''Universitas Sedis Sapientiae'') is a private research university in Japan. Sophia is one of the three ''Sōkeijōchi'' (早慶上智) private universities, a group of the to ...

in Tokyo and has a 1991 bachelor's degree from Oxford in mathematics (where he studied as a British Council Fellow). He obtained his PhD at Princeton under the supervision of William Browder. Tokieda joined the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign as a J. L. Doob Research Assistant Professor for the 1997 academic year. He has been involved in the

African Institute for Mathematical Sciences The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) is a tertiary education and research institute in Muizenberg, South Africa, established in September 2003, and an associated network of linked institutes in Senegal, Ghana, Cameroon, Tanzan ...

since its beginning in 2003. In 2004, he was elected a Fellow of Trinity Hall, where he became the Director of Studies in Mathematics and the Stephan and Thomas Körner Fellow. He was the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Fellow in 2013–2014 at the

Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University—also known as the Harvard Radcliffe Institute—is a part of Harvard University that fosters interdisciplinary research across the humanities, sciences, social sciences, arts, a ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

. In the academic year 2015–2016 he was the Poincaré Distinguished Visiting Professor at Stanford. Besides his native language Japanese, he is also fluent in French and English. In addition, he knows ancient Greek, Latin, classical Chinese, Finnish, Spanish, and Russian. So far he has lived in eight countries. In March 2020, Tokieda was interviewed on ''The Joy of X'',

Steven Strogatz Steven Henry Strogatz (), born August 13, 1959, is an American mathematician and the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University. He is known for his work on nonlinear systems, including contributions to the study o ...

's podcast for '' Quanta Magazine''.

Selected publications

* * * * * *

References

External links

* * at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

Toy inspires new spin on Earth's magnetic field
, ''

New Scientist ''New Scientist'' is a magazine covering all aspects of science and technology. Based in London, it publishes weekly English-language editions in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. An editorially separate organisation publish ...

'' * {{DEFAULTSORT:Tokieda, Tadashi Living people 1968 births Japanese expatriates in the United States Japanese expatriates in the United Kingdom Alumni of the University of Oxford Princeton University alumni Sophia University alumni 21st-century Japanese mathematicians Mathematical physicists Geometers Scientists from Tokyo 20th-century Japanese mathematicians