Shou-Wu Zhang

Who is Shou-Wu Zhang?

Shou-Wu Zhang is a professor of mathematics at Princeton University. He specializes in number theory and arithmetical algebraic geometry.

Shou-Wu Zhang was born in Hexian, Ma'anshan, Anhui, China on October 9, 1962. Zhang was admitted by the Sun Yat-sen University chemistry department in 1980 and later he transferred to the mathematics department of the same institution. He got his bachelor's degree in 1983 and became a graduate student in the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He finished his master's degree and went to Columbia University in 1986, working with Professor Lucien Szpiro and Gerd Faltings. He received his PhD in 1991 and then became a member of the Institute for Advanced Study and an assistant professor at Princeton University from 1991 to 1996. Zhang has been tenured at Columbia University since 1996 and at Princeton University since 2011.

Zhang's main contributions to number theory and arithmetical algebraic geometry are his theory of positive line bundles in Arakelov theory which he used to prove the Bogomolov conjecture, and also his generalization of the Gross-Zagier theorem from elliptic curves to abelian varieties of GL type over totally real fields. In particular, the latter result led him to a proof of the rank one Birch-Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture for abelian varieties of GL type over totally real fields. He has also developed the theory of arithmetic dynamics.