Seven new members of the regular faculty are beginning work in the physical sciences at Brown this fall: Angus Kingon in Engineering; Bo Dong and Hongjie Dong in Applied Mathematics; Sarah Delaney in Chemistry; Gregor Hirth in Geological Sciences; Richard Kenyon and Alex Kontorovich in Mathematics.
See also new faculty in arts and humanities, social sciences and life sciences.
Alex Kontorovich
Tamarkin Assistant Professor of Mathematics
Many researchers look for questions that have never been asked before. Alex Kontorovich likes the ones that have gone unanswered for a couple thousand years. He works in the area of number theory, seeking - for instance - a definitive answer to the question: How many pairs of prime numbers exist with values that differ by two?
It's not a purely esoteric endeavor - such number series find uses in computer security, identity verification and cryptography - but Kontorovich is clearly drawn by the challenge of a problem that many others have tried unsuccessfully to solve. Although he was only a teen-ager at the time, Kontorovich recalls with obvious pleasure the excitement surrounding Andrew Wiles' proof of Fermat's last theorem in 1994.
Kontorovich finds it convenient that his research requires no laboratory or supercomputer. Using mainly pencil and paper, he is able to work on planes and trains - which is especially helpful, since he performs several times a month and travels extensively playing clarinet and saxophone with eight different klezmer and jazz ensembles. His MySpace page, myspace.com/deepminor, offers a sample of his playing, which reviewers have called "hypnotic" and compared to that of klezmer legend Dave Tarras. His latest album, Deep Minor, is due for release in the United States in September 2007 (liner notes are also available on the Web site).
"If I have too much time to think about math, I get stuck," says Kontorovich, who uses music to get perspective on his research. "It's a nice way to force me to back a way from the math for a little while and look at the bigger picture."
Kontorovich, who comes to Brown straight from his Ph.D. studies at Columbia University, is looking forward to being part of Brown's small, tightly knit mathematics community. He's also looking forward to teaching, which he compares to traveling in "a land that we're going to go visit together."
"I can show you the way," he says, "but you have to do the hiking yourself."
