Charles Louis Fefferman (born April 18, 1949) is an Americanmathematician atPrinceton University, where he is currently the Herbert E. Jones, Jr. '43 University Professor of Mathematics. He was awarded theFields Medal in 1978 for his contributions tomathematical analysis.
Fefferman was born to a Jewish family,[1][2] in Washington, DC. He was achild prodigy, entered theUniversity of Maryland at age 14,[3][4][7] and had written his first scientific paper by the age of 15.[3] He graduated with degrees in math and physics at 17,[8] and earned hisPhD in mathematics three years later fromPrinceton University, underElias Stein. His doctoral dissertation was titled "Inequalities for strongly singular convolution operators".[9] Fefferman achieved a full professorship at theUniversity of Chicago at the age of 22, making him the youngest full professor ever appointed in the United States.[6]
At the age of 25, he returned to Princeton as a full professor, becoming the youngest person to be promoted to the title.[10] He won theAlan T. Waterman Award in 1976[4] (the first person to get the award) and theFields Medal in 1978 for his work inmathematical analysis, specifically convergence and divergence.[3] He was elected to theNational Academy of Sciences in 1979.[11] He was appointed the Herbert Jones Professor at Princeton in 1984.
Charles Fefferman and his wife Julie have two daughters, Nina and Lainie. Lainie Fefferman is a composer, taught math atSaint Ann's School and holds a degree in music fromYale University as well as a Ph.D. in music composition from Princeton.[21] She has an interest inMiddle Eastern music.[22]Nina Fefferman is a computational biologist residing at the University of Tennessee whose research is concerned with the application of mathematical models to complex biological systems.[23] Charles Fefferman's brother,Robert Fefferman, is also a mathematician and former Dean of the Physical Sciences Division at theUniversity of Chicago.[24]
Constantin, P.; Fefferman, C.; Majda, A. J. (1996), "Geometric constraints on potentially singular solutions for the 3-D Euler equations",Communications in Partial Differential Equations,21 (3–4):559–571,doi:10.1080/03605309608821197
^The Jewish lists: physicists and generals, actors and writers, and hundreds of other lists of accomplished Jews, Martin Harry Greenberg, (Schocken, 1979), page 110
^American Jewish Year Book 2017: The Annual Record of the North American Jewish Communities, Arnold Dashefsky, Ira M. Sheskin, (Springer, 2018), page 796
