Cape Town, 21 January 2015 – This week the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) South Africa in Muizenberg is hosting a number of important world renowned mathematicians who are attending the AIMS-Stellenbosch University Number Theory Workshop from 19 to 23 January 2015.

Professor Enrico Bombieri, a Fields Medalist for his work on the large sieve and its application to the distribution of prime numbers, is one of the world’s leading authorities on number theory and analysis.

Professor Nick Katz (pictured right during a special lecture at AIMS South Africa) is an American mathematician, working in the fields of algebraic geometry, particularly on p-adic methods, monodromy and moduli problems, and number theory. He is currently a professor in the Mathematics Department at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey.

Professor Peter Sarnak is a South African-born American mathematician. He has been Eugene Higgins Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University since 2002. Sarnak is also on the permanent faculty at the School of Mathematics of the Institute for Advanced Study. He is the recipient of the 2014 Wolf Prize in Mathematics.

They will be joined by Dr Yuri Tschinkel, Director of Mathematics and the Physical Sciences at the Simons Foundation; Jayadev Athreya, Assistant Professor Director, Illinois Geometry Lab, Department of Mathematics, University of Illinois and other experts from around the world.

The goal of this conference, which is being done in collaboration with the Clay Mathematics Institute in the USA, is to give a broad perspective of areas of modern number theory and to highlight some recent advances. This conference is one of the biennial Number Theory meetings which has been held at Stellenbosch University since 1997.

About the Clay Mathematics Institute

The Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI) is a privately funded operating foundation dedicated to increasing and disseminating mathematical knowledge. The CMI supports the work of leading researchers at various stages of their careers and organizes conferences, workshops, and an annual summer school. Contemporary breakthroughs are recognized by its annual Research Award. (www.claymath.org)