Jessica Fintzen Awarded the Whitehead Prize From the London Mathematical Society

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.