Nina Claire Snaith is a British mathematician at the

University of Bristol , mottoeng = earningpromotes one's innate power (from Horace, ''Ode 4.4'') , established = 1595 – Merchant Venturers School1876 – University College, Bristol1909 – received royal charter , type ...

working in random matrix theory and quantum chaos.

Education

Snaith was educated at the

where she received her PhD in 2000 for research supervised by

Jonathan Keating Jonathan Peter Keating (born 20 September 1963) is a British mathematician. As of September 2019, he is the Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and from 2012 to 2019 was the Henry Overton Wills Professor of Math ...

Career and research

In 1998, Snaith and her then adviser

conjectured a value for the leading coefficient of the asymptotics of the moments of the

Riemann zeta function The Riemann zeta function or Euler–Riemann zeta function, denoted by the Greek letter (zeta), is a mathematical function of a complex variable defined as \zeta(s) = \sum_^\infty \frac = \frac + \frac + \frac + \cdots for \operatorname(s) > ...

. Keating and Snaith's guessed value for the constant was based on random-matrix theory, following a trend that started with

Montgomery's pair correlation conjecture In mathematics, Montgomery's pair correlation conjecture is a conjecture made by that the pair correlation between pairs of zeros of the Riemann zeta function (normalized to have unit average spacing) is :1-\left(\frac\right)^ + \delta(u), which ...

. Keating's and Snaith's work extended works by Brian Conrey, Ghosh, and Gonek, also conjectural, based on number theoretic

heuristic A heuristic (; ), or heuristic technique, is any approach to problem solving or self-discovery that employs a practical method that is not guaranteed to be optimal, perfect, or rational, but is nevertheless sufficient for reaching an immediate, ...

s; Conrey, Farmer, Keating, Rubinstein, and Snaith later conjectured the lower terms in the asymptotics of the moments. Snaith's work appeared in her doctoral thesis ''Random Matrix Theory and zeta functions''.

Awards and honours

In 2008, Snaith was awarded the London Mathematical Society's

Whitehead Prize The Whitehead Prize is awarded yearly by the London Mathematical Society to multiple mathematicians working in the United Kingdom who are at an early stage of their career. The prize is named in memory of homotopy theory pioneer J. H. C. Whiteh ...

. In 2014, she delivered the 2014 Hanna Neuman Lecture to honour the achievements of women in mathematics.

Personal life

Snaith is the daughter of mathematician and sister of mathematician and musician

Dan Snaith Daniel Victor Snaith (born March 29, 1978) is a Canadian composer, musician, and recording artist who has performed under the stage names Caribou, Manitoba, and Daphni. Career Snaith originally recorded under the stage name Manitoba, but afte ...

, mostly known by his artistic name Caribou.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Snaith, Nina 20th-century British mathematicians 21st-century British mathematicians British women mathematicians Alumni of the University of Bristol Academics of the University of Bristol Living people Canadian mathematicians Year of birth missing (living people) Whitehead Prize winners 20th-century women mathematicians 21st-century women mathematicians