Bhargava wins mathematics prizes

Manjul Bhargava, professor of mathematics, has been selected as the recipient of two prestigious prizes in the field of mathematics.

He has received the Clay Research Award presented by the Clay Mathematics Institute in Massachusetts. The annual award recognizes major breakthroughs in mathematical research. Bhargava was cited for his discovery of new composition laws for quadratic forms, and for his work on the average size of ideal class groups.

Bhargava also has been selected as a winner of the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize, instituted by the Shanmugha Arts, Science, Technology and Research Academy in India. The $10,000 award is presented to young scholars for their outstanding contributions in the field of mathematics. Bhargava is being recognized for his work in number theory, notably his Ph.D. work that resulted in the discovery of higher order composition laws.

Bhargava earned a Ph.D. from Princeton in 2001 and joined the faculty in 2003. His primary research interests lie in number theory, representation theory and algebraic geometry. He also won a Packard Foundation Fellowship in Science and Engineering in 2004 and the AMS Blumenthal Award for the Advancement of Pure Mathematics in 2005, and he was named one of Popular Science magazine's "Brilliant 10" in 2002.