Chen Jingrun | |||||||||||||||
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| Born | 22 May 1933 | ||||||||||||||
| Died | 19 March 1996(1996-03-19) (aged 62) Beijing, China | ||||||||||||||
| Alma mater | Chinese Academy of Sciences Xiamen University | ||||||||||||||
| Known for | Chen's theorem,Chen prime | ||||||||||||||
| Scientific career | |||||||||||||||
| Fields | Mathematics | ||||||||||||||
| Doctoral advisor | Hua Luogeng | ||||||||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 陳景潤 | ||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 陈景润 | ||||||||||||||
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Chen Jingrun (Chinese:陳景潤; 22 May 1933 – 19 March 1996), also known asJing-Run Chen, was a Chinesemathematician who made significant contributions tonumber theory, includingChen's theorem and theChen prime.
Chen was the third son in a large family fromFuzhou,Fujian, China. His father was a postal worker. Chen Jingrun graduated from the Mathematics Department ofXiamen University in 1953. His advisor at theChinese Academy of Sciences wasHua Luogeng.
His work on thetwin prime conjecture,Waring's problem,Goldbach's conjecture andLegendre's conjecture led to progress inanalytic number theory. In a 1966 paper heproved what is now calledChen's theorem: everysufficiently large even number can be written as the sum of a prime and asemiprime (the product of two primes) – e.g., 100 = 23 + 7·11.[1] Despite being persecuted during theCultural Revolution, he expanded his proof in the 1970s.[2]
After the end of the Cultural Revolution,Xu Chi wrote a biography of Chen,Goldbach's Conjecture (哥德巴赫猜想). First published inPeople's Literature in January 1978, it was reprinted in thePeople's Daily a month later and became a national sensation. Chen became a household name in China and received a sackful of love letters from all over the country within two months.[3]
Chen died of complications ofpneumonia on 19 March 1996, at age 62.[4]
Theasteroid7681 Chenjingrun, discovered in 1996, was named after him.[1]
In 1999, China issued an 80-cent postage stamp, titledThe Best Result of Goldbach Conjecture, with a silhouette of Chen and the inequality:[1]
Several statues in China have been built in memory of Chen. At Xiamen University, the names of Chen and four other mathematicians—Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet,Matti Jutila,Yuri Linnik, andPan Chengdong—are inscribed on the marble slab behind Chen's statue.
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