Noga Alon ( he, נוגה אלון; born 17 February 1956) is an Israeli

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 ...

and a professor of mathematics at Princeton University noted for his contributions to

combinatorics Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and an end in obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many a ...

and

theoretical computer science computer science (TCS) is a subset of general computer science and mathematics that focuses on mathematical aspects of computer science such as the theory of computation, lambda calculus, and type theory. It is difficult to circumscribe the ...

, having authored hundreds of papers.

Academic background

Alon is a Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University and a Baumritter Professor Emeritus of Mathematics and Computer Science at

Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) ( he, אוּנִיבֶרְסִיטַת תֵּל אָבִיב, ''Universitat Tel Aviv'') is a public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Locate ...

, Israel. He graduated from the

Hebrew Reali School , motto_translation = ''Walk Humbly'' , address = Hertzel 16 , city = Haifa , zipcode = 3312103 , country = Israel , coordinates = , other_name ...

in 1974 and received his Ph.D. in Mathematics at the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Dr. Chaim Weiz ...

in 1983 and had visiting positions in various research institutes including

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

, The

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent schola ...

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nin ...

IBM Almaden Research Center IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. IBM Research is the largest industrial research o ...

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mul ...

Bellcore iconectiv is a supplier of network planning and network management services to telecommunications providers. Known as Bellcore after its establishment in the United States in 1983 as part of the break-up of the Bell System, the company's name ...

and

Microsoft Research Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technolog ...

. He serves on the editorial boards of more than a dozen international journals; since 2008 he is the editor-in-chief of ''Random Structures and Algorithms''. He has given lectures in many conferences, including plenary addresses in the 1996

European Congress of Mathematics The European Congress of Mathematics (ECM) is the second largest international conference of the mathematics community, after the International Congresses of Mathematicians (ICM). The ECM are held every four years and are timed precisely betwe ...

and in the 2002

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 rena ...

, the 2009 Turán Memorial Lectures, and a lecture in the 1990

Research

Alon has published more than five hundred research papers, mostly in

and in

, and one book. He has also published under the pseudonym "A. Nilli". Alon is the principal founder of the

Combinatorial Nullstellensatz In additive number theory and combinatorics, a restricted sumset has the form :S=\, where A_1,\ldots,A_n are finite nonempty subsets of a field ''F'' and P(x_1,\ldots,x_n) is a polynomial over ''F''. If P is a constant non-zero function, for ...

which has many applications in combinatorics and

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, "Ma ...

Selected works

Books

* 1992. ''The Probabilistic Method''. (with

Joel Spencer Joel Spencer (born April 20, 1946) is an American 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, da ...

) Wiley. : : :

Articles

* 1996. ''The space complexity of approximating the frequency moments''. (with Yossi Matias and Mario Szegedy
ACM STOC '96
: won their

Gödel Prize The Gödel Prize is an annual prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science, given jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interes ...

in 2005. * 1987. ''The monotone circuit complexity of Boolean functions''. (with Ravi B Boppana)
Combinatorica 1987, Volume 7, Issue 1
* 1986. ''Eigenvalues and expanders''
Combinatorica 1986, Volume 6, Issue 2

Awards

Alon has received a number of awards, including the following: * 1989 –

Erdős Prize The Anna and Lajos Erdős Prize in Mathematics is a prize given by the Israel Mathematical Union The Israel Mathematical Union (IMU) ( he, הַאִיגּוּד הַיִשְׂרְאֵלִי לְמָתֶמָטִיקָה) is an association of pr ...

; * 1991 – Feher Prize; * 2000 – Pólya Prize; * 2001 – Bruno Memorial Award; * 2005 – Landau Prize; * 2005 –

(with Yossi Matias and Mario Szegedy); ''for their foundational contribution to streaming algorithms''. * 2008 –

Israel Prize The Israel Prize ( he, פרס ישראל; ''pras israél'') is an award bestowed by the State of Israel, and regarded as the state's highest cultural honor. History The Israel Prize is awarded annually, on Israeli Independence Day, in a state cer ...

, for mathematics. * 2011 –

EMET Prize The EMET Prize for Art, Science and Culture is an Israeli prize awarded annually for excellence in academic and professional achievements that have far-reaching influence and make a significant contribution to society. Prizes are awarded in the fol ...

, for mathematics. * 2021 – Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition (jointly with

). * 2022 –

Shaw Prize The Shaw Prize is an annual award presented by the Shaw Prize Foundation. Established in 2002 in Hong Kong, it honours "individuals who are currently active in their respective fields and who have recently achieved distinguished and signifi ...

in Mathematical Sciences * 2022 –

Knuth Prize The Donald E. Knuth Prize is a prize for outstanding contributions to the foundations of computer science, named after the American computer scientist Donald E. Knuth. History The Knuth Prize has been awarded since 1996 and includes an award of U ...

In addition, Alon has been a member of the

Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, based in Jerusalem, was established in 1961 by the State of Israel to foster contact between Israeli scholars in the sciences and humanities and create a think tank for advising the government on re ...

since 1997. In 2015 he was elected as a

fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

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, meeting ...

and gave the Łojasiewicz Lecture (on the "Signrank and its applications in combinatorics and complexity") at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. In 2017 he became a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery..

References

External links

Noga Alon's home page
*
Author profile
in the database zbMATH *

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as ...

is 109 (). {{DEFAULTSORT:Alon, Noga Living people Israel Prize in mathematics recipients Israel Defense Prize recipients Israeli mathematicians Israeli computer scientists 20th-century Israeli mathematicians 21st-century Israeli mathematicians Combinatorialists Gödel Prize laureates EMET Prize recipients in the Exact Sciences Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars Einstein Institute of Mathematics alumni Hebrew Reali School alumni Tel Aviv University faculty Jewish scientists Knuth Prize laureates Members of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery 1956 births Technion – Israel Institute of Technology alumni Tel Aviv University alumni Princeton University faculty Erdős Prize recipients