Jessica Fintzen, an assistant professor of mathematics at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, has won the Whitehead Prize from the London Mathematical Society. The prize is reserved for early-career mathematicians who reside in, teach in, or were educated in the United Kingdom. Dr. Fintzen is eligible because she also serves as a Royal Society University Research Fellow and lecturer at the University of Cambridge. The prize is named for professor J. H. C. Whitehead, a former president of the London Mathematical Society.
Professor Fintzen was honored for her groundbreaking work in the so-called Langlands program, which connects two areas of mathematics: number theory (the study of integers and prime numbers) and representation theory, which involves studying complex objects by representing them with simpler objects like matrices.
Dr. Fintzen earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics from Jacobs University Bremen in Germany. She holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard University.