Henri Darmon - Global Excellence Initiative

In recognition of his work in number theory, McGill University mathematician Henri Darmon is among this year’s winners of the Guggenheim Fellowship.

“Number theory is one of the oldest branches of mathematics, with roots going back to antiquity,” says Dr. Darmon. “It studies ostensibly elementary questions about whole numbers, such as Diophantine equations and the distribution of prime numbers. These fundamental questions have been part of human culture for millennia, but their exploration has led to the discovery of a rich array of tools and ideas that are now an essential part of modern mathematics.

“Number theory combines a focus on venerable problems which would have made sense to the ancient Greeks or to medieval Arabic scholars, with an ability to harness the full power of modern mathematical techniques.”

Although these are very old questions from thousands of years ago, it is only now that “we are starting to have the techniques and tools to address them,” he says. “While motivated by the purest of pursuits, these techniques have found substantial applications in such areas as signal processing, data compression, and cryptography. The difficulty of factoring large numbers is at the heart of widely used public key crypto systems, which are indispensable for online transactions and secure communications. So, number theory plays a significant role in the infrastructure of modern economies.”

Dr. Darmon says he was “pleasantly surprised” to win the Guggenheim Fellowship and plans to donate the funds from his award to support the scientific activities of his research community.