Jacob Tsimerman receives prestigious 2022 New Horizons Prize
Published: October 29, 2021
Jacob Tsimerman, an associate professor in the Faculty of Arts & Science’s department of mathematics, has been awarded a 2022 New Horizons Prize in Mathematics from the Breakthrough Prize Foundation.
“It feels great to receive this recognition,” says Tsimerman. “But there are a lot of people involved in the work I do – it's a big community – so it feels good to be able to share the honour with my colleagues.”
Tsimerman’s research focuses primarily on analytic number theory and arithmetic geometry. One of his most notable research accomplishments is his contribution to a proof for a longstanding mathematical hypothesis called the André-Oort conjecture.
“The New Horizons Prize is one of the top international awards for rising young stars in mathematics,” says Robert Jerrard, chair of the department of mathematics. “It confirms Jacob's stature as one of the foremost number theorists of his generation. It honours his breakthrough research spanning disparate areas – number theory, algebraic geometry and model theory – leading to a proof of the celebrated André-Oort Conjecture.”
The award is the latest in a series of honours for Tsimerman, who was the youngest faculty member in the department when he joined the University of Toronto as an assistant professor in 2014. In 2015, he was the first Canadian to win the prestigious Sastra Ramanujan Prize. In 2017, he received the André Aisenstadt Prize from the Centre de recherche mathématiques at the University of Montréal. And in 2019, the Canadian Mathematical Society awarded Tsimerman the Coxeter-James Prize.
