Bryna Kra | |
|---|---|
| Born | Bryna Rebekah Kra 1966 (age 58–59) |
| Citizenship | American |
| Alma mater | Stanford University,Harvard University |
| Known for | Ergodic theory |
| Awards | Levi L. Conant Prize (2010) |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Northwestern University University of Michigan |
| Thesis | Commutative groups of diffeomorphisms of the circle (1995) |
| Doctoral advisor | Yitzhak Katznelson |
| Website | www |
Bryna Rebekah Kra (born 1966) is an American mathematician and the Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor at Northwestern University. Kra served as the president of the American Mathematical Society from 2023 to 2025. She is a member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences and theNational Academy of Sciences. Her academic work centered ondynamical systems andergodic theory. In particular Kra has made significant contributions to the structure theory of characteristic factors for multiple ergodic averages.[1] This work has allowed her to address problems innumber theory andcombinatorics.[2]
Kra was born in 1966 inBoston.[3] She graduated with a bachelor's degree fromHarvard University in 1988, and obtained her Ph.D. fromStanford University in 1995 under the guidance ofYitzhak Katznelson.[4] She held postdoctoral positions at theHebrew University in Jerusalem, theUniversity of Michigan, theIHÉS and theOhio State University before joining the mathematics faculty atPennsylvania State University as an assistant professor. Since 2004 Kra has been a professor of mathematics atNorthwestern University, where she was department chair from 2009 to 2012.
With Bernard Host, Kra is the author of the bookNilpotent Structures in Ergodic Theory (Mathematical Surveys and Monographs 236,American Mathematical Society, 2018).
In 2010 Kra was awarded theLevi L. Conant Prize for her expository article "TheGreen–Tao theorem on arithmetic progressions in the primes: an ergodic point of view".[5][6] In 2006 she was aninvited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians inMadrid ("From combinatorics to ergodic theory and back again"),[7] and was named an AMS Centennial Fellow the same year.[8] In 2012 she became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.[9] In 2016 she became a fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences.[10] In 2019, she was elected to theNational Academy of Sciences.[11] She was named a 2021Simons Fellows in Mathematics.[12] Kra was elected to the 2023 class of fellows of theAssociation for Women in Mathematics "for her vision and work creating programs to support women in mathematics, especially GROW (Graduate Research Opportunities for Women) and AWM student chapters; for her leadership in the mathematics community, including serving on the AWM Executive Committee and serving as president of AMS; and for making advocacy for women a priority throughout her career."[13] Kra was elected president of theAmerican Mathematical Society in 2021 and she served as president from February 2023 to January 2025.[14]
Kra is the daughter of mathematicianIrwin Kra.[15]
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