Preda V. Mihăilescu (born 23 May 1955) is a Romanian mathematician, best known for his proof of the 158-year-old
Catalan's conjecture
Catalan's conjecture (or Mihăilescu's theorem) is a theorem in number theory that was conjectured by the mathematician Eugène Charles Catalan in 1844 and proven in 2002 by Preda Mihăilescu at Paderborn University. The integers 23 and 32 ...
.
Biography
Born in
Bucharest
Bucharest ( , ; ) is the capital and largest city of Romania. The metropolis stands on the River Dâmbovița (river), Dâmbovița in south-eastern Romania. Its population is officially estimated at 1.76 million residents within a greater Buc ...
,
[Stewart 2013] he is the brother of
Vintilă Mihăilescu.
After leaving Romania in 1973, he settled in
Switzerland
Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...
.
He studied mathematics and computer science in
Zürich
Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...
, receiving a PhD from
ETH Zürich
ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ra ...
in 1997. His PhD thesis, titled ''Cyclotomy of rings and primality testing'', was written under the direction of
Erwin Engeler and
Hendrik Lenstra
Hendrik Willem Lenstra Jr. (born 16 April 1949, Zaandam) is a Dutch mathematician.
Biography
Lenstra received his doctorate from the University of Amsterdam in 1977 and became a professor there in 1978. In 1987, he was appointed to the faculty o ...
.
For several years, he did research at the
University of Paderborn, Germany. Since 2005, he has held a professorship at the
University of Göttingen
The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen (, commonly referred to as Georgia Augusta), is a Public university, public research university in the city of Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1734 ...
.
Major research
In 2002, Mihăilescu proved
Catalan's conjecture
Catalan's conjecture (or Mihăilescu's theorem) is a theorem in number theory that was conjectured by the mathematician Eugène Charles Catalan in 1844 and proven in 2002 by Preda Mihăilescu at Paderborn University. The integers 23 and 32 ...
.
[Bilu et al. 2014.] This number-theoretical conjecture, formulated by the French and Belgian mathematician
Eugène Charles Catalan in 1844, had stood unresolved for 158 years. Mihăilescu's proof appeared in ''
Crelle's Journal
''Crelle's Journal'', or just ''Crelle'', is the common name for a mathematics journal, the ''Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik'' (in English: ''Journal for Pure and Applied Mathematics'').
History
The journal was founded by A ...
'' in 2004.
Notes
References
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External links
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Web page at GöttingenFormer Web page at Paderborn (no longer updated)
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Mihailescu, Preda
1955 births
Living people
20th-century Romanian mathematicians
21st-century Romanian mathematicians
Number theorists
21st-century German mathematicians
Academic staff of the University of Göttingen
ETH Zurich alumni
Scientists from Bucharest
Romanian emigrants to Switzerland