Laurent Lafforgue | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1966-11-06)6 November 1966 (age 59) |
| Alma mater | École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay University |
| Known for | Proof of Langlands conjectures |
| Awards | Clay Research Award (2000) Fields Medal (2002) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | CNRS |
| Thesis | D-stukas de Drinfeld (1994) |
| Doctoral advisor | Gérard Laumon |
Laurent Lafforgue (French:[lafɔʁɡ]; born 6 November 1966) is a Frenchmathematician. He has made outstanding contributions toLanglands' program in the fields ofnumber theory andanalysis,[1] and in particular proved the Langlands conjectures for theautomorphism group of a function field. The crucial contribution by Lafforgue to solve this question is the construction of compactifications of certainmoduli stacks ofshtukas. Theproof was the result of more than six years of concentrated efforts.[2]
In 2002 at the 24thInternational Congress of Mathematicians inBeijing,China, he received theFields Medal together withVladimir Voevodsky.[3]
Laurent Lafforgue has two brothers, Thomas andVincent, both mathematicians. Thomas is now a teacher in aclasse préparatoire aux grandes écoles at Lycée Louis le Grand inParis andVincent aCNRS directeur de recherches at the Institut Fourier in Grenoble.
He won 2 silver medals atInternational Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) in 1984 and 1985. He entered theÉcole Normale Supérieure in 1986. In 1994 he received hisPh.D. under the direction ofGérard Laumon in theArithmetic andAlgebraic Geometry team at theUniversité de Paris-Sud. Currently he is a research director ofCNRS. He was detached as permanent professor ofmathematics at theInstitut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHÉS) inBures-sur-Yvette, France, in 2000-2021. In 2021, he left his IHÉS position and moved toHuawei.[4] His goal there is to applytopos theory to the area ofartificial intelligence.[5]
He received theClay Research Award in 2000, and theGrand Prix Jacques Herbrand [fr] of theFrench Academy of Sciences in 2001 and was awarded the Fields Medal in 2002. His younger brotherVincent Lafforgue is also a notable mathematician. On 22 May 2011 Lafforgue was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science from theUniversity of Notre Dame.[6]
Lafforgue is a critic of what he calls the "pedagogically correct" in France's educational system. In 2005, he was forced to resign from theHaut conseil de l'éducation after he expressed these views in a private letter that he sent toBruno Racine, president of the HCE, that later was made public.[7]
Laurent is a devout Catholic and never married.[8] He opposedsame-sex marriage in France, and supported the"Les Veilleurs” movement [fr].[9]
In 2024, he declared that he was “full of admiration for Huawei”, which would supposedly be suffering acampaign of criticism from the USA.[10]
Expository articles
Research articles
