John Friedlander

Who is John Friedlander?

John Benjamin Friedlander is a Canadian mathematician specializing in analytic number theory. He received his B.Sc. from the University of Toronto in 1965, an M.A. from the University of Waterloo in 1966, and a Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University in 1972. He was a lecturer at M.I.T. in 1974-76, and has been on the faculty of the University of Toronto since 1977, where he served as Chair during 1987-91. He has also spent several years at the Institute for Advanced Study where he has collaborated with Enrico Bombieri and many others.

In 1997, in joint work with Henryk Iwaniec, Friedlander proved that infinitely many prime numbers can be obtained as the sum of a square and fourth power. Friedlander and Iwaniec improved Enrico Bombieri's "asymptotic sieve" technique to construct their proof.