Ken Ono | |
|---|---|
 Headshot of Ken Ono | |
| Born | (1968-03-20)March 20, 1968 (age 57) |
| Alma mater | University of Chicago (BA, MA) University of California, Los Angeles (PhD) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | University of Virginia[1] Emory University University of Wisconsin–Madison Pennsylvania State University |
| Doctoral advisor | Basil Gordon |
| Doctoral students | Robert Schneider |
| Other notable students | Daniel Kane Kate Douglass |
| Website | uva |
Ken Ono (born March 20, 1968) is an Americanmathematician with fields of study innumber theory. He is the STEM Advisor to the Provost and the Marvin Rosenblum Professor of Mathematics at theUniversity of Virginia.
Ono was born on March 20, 1968, inPhiladelphia,Pennsylvania.[2] He is the son of mathematicianTakashi Ono, who emigrated from Japan to the United States after World War II. Ono was born in the United States as his father returned to the United States from theUniversity of British Columbia in Canada for a position at theUniversity of Pennsylvania.[3]
In the 1980s, Ono attendedTowson High School, but dropped out. He later enrolled at theUniversity of Chicago without a high school diploma. There he raced bicycles, and he was a member of thePepsi–Miyata Cycling Team.[4]
He received his BA from theUniversity of Chicago in 1989, where he was a member of thePsi Upsilon fraternity.[2] He earned his PhD in 1993 from theUniversity of California, Los Angeles, where his advisor wasBasil Gordon.[5][2] Initially, he planned to study medicine, but later switched to mathematics. He attributes his interest in mathematics to his father.[6]
Ono worked as an instructor atWoodbury University from 1991 to 1993, as a visiting assistant professor at theUniversity of Georgia from 1993 to 1994, and as a visiting assistant professor at theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1994 to 1995.[2] He was a member of theInstitute for Advanced Study from 1995 to 1997.[2]
Ono worked atPennsylvania State University from 1997 to 2000 as an assistant professor and then as the Louis A. Martarano Professor of Mathematics.[2] He moved to theUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison as an associate professor in 1999, and later became the Solle P. and Margaret Manasse Professor of Letters and Science from 2004 to 2011 and as the Hilldale Professor of Mathematics from 2008 to 2011.[2] He was the Candler Professor of Mathematics atEmory University from 2010 to 2019.[2] In 2019, Ono became the Thomas Jefferson Professor of Mathematics at theUniversity of Virginia, where he was named the Marvin Rosenblum Professor of Mathematics and the chair of the Department of Mathematics in fall 2021.[7][2] He ended his term as chair in Fall 2022 to become the STEM Advisor to the Provost at the University of Virginia.[2]
Ono was the Vice President of theAmerican Mathematical Society from 2018 to 2021.[2] He is serving as the section chair for mathematics at theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science from 2020 to 2023.[2]
In 2000, Ono derived a theory ofRamanujan's congruences for thepartition function with all prime moduli greater than 3. His paper was published in theAnnals of Mathematics.[8] In a joint work withJan Bruinier, Ono discovered a finite algebraic formula for computing partition numbers.[9]
In 2014, a joint paper by Michael J. Griffin, Ono, and S. Ole Warnaar provided a framework for theRogers–Ramanujan identities and their arithmetic properties, solving a long-standing mystery stemming from the work of Ramanujan.[10] The findings yield new formulas for algebraic numbers. Their work was ranked 15th among the top 100 stories of 2014 in science byDiscover magazine.[11]
In a 2015 joint paper co-authored with John Duncan and Michael Griffin, Ono helped prove theumbral moonshine conjecture.[12] This conjecture was formulated byMiranda Cheng, John Duncan, and Jeff Harvey, and is a generalization of themonstrous moonshine conjecture proved byRichard Borcherds.[12]
In May 2019, Ono published a joint paper (co-authored withDon Zagier and two former students) in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on theRiemann hypothesis. Their work proves a large portion of the Jensen-Polya criterion for the Riemann hypothesis.[13] However, the Riemann hypothesis remains unsolved. Their work also establishes the Gaussian Unitary Ensemble random matrix condition in derivative aspect for the derivatives of theRiemann Xi function.[14]
In 2024, he published (co-authored with William Craig and Jan-Willem van Ittersum) a groundbreaking paper which proves a new, unexpected way to identify prime numbers using the properties ofinteger partitions. In 2025 he was nominated for the Cozzarelli Prize.[15][16]
Beginning in 2016, Ono has used mathematical analysis and modeling to advise elite competitive swimmers, including participants in the 2020 and 2024 Olympians.[17][18][19][20][21][22][23]
Ono wrote, withAmir Aczel as coauthor, an autobiography, emphasizing the inspiration he gained from Ramanujan's mathematical research.[24][25]
Ono was an Associate Producer and the mathematical consultant for the movieThe Man Who Knew Infinity, which starredJeremy Irons andDev Patel, based onRamanujan's biography written byRobert Kanigel.[6]
He starred in a 2022 Super Bowl commercial forMiller Lite beer.[26] He is on the Board of Directors of the Infinity Arts Foundation.[27]
From 2012 to 2014, Ono has competed inWorld Triathlon Cross Championships events, representing the United States.[28]
Ono is on the editorial board of several journals:[2]
