Shou-Wu Zhang

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Shou-Wu Zhang(Chinese: 张寿武) is a professor of mathematics at Columbia University. He specializes in number theory and arithmetical algebraic geometry.

Shou-Wu Zhang, born around October 9, 1962, was born in Hexian, Anhui, China. Zhang was admitted by the Zhongshan University chemistry department in 1980 and he transferred to the mathematics department of the same institution later. 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 Szpiro and 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 he proved the Bogomolov Conjecture in the same year. Zhang was an invited speaker of the International Congress of Mathematicians at Berlin in 1998 and was awarded a Morningside Gold Medal of Mathematics in the same year by the International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians.

Zhang's main contributions to number theory and arithmetical algebraic geometry are his theory of positive line bundles in Arakelov theory which he used it to prove (with Ullmo) the Bogomolov conjecture, and also his generalization of the Gross-Zagier theorem from elliptic curves to abelian varieties of GL(2) 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(2) type over totally real fields. He developed the theory of algebraic dynamical systems. Currently, he is developing the theory of triple product L-function with his students.