Cloud Hosting

Discovering pure mathematics

Nine years after transferring to UVic as an undergraduate student, Chris Bruce is leaving with a PhD in Mathematics and a prestigious NSERC Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship.

In that time, he has proven himself to be an exceptional mathematician.

Born and raised in Victoria, Bruce started his undergraduate degree at Camosun College, and had quite a different path in mind. I thought Id major in business or economics, he says. He had already started an online business, selling parts for mountain bikes. But after transferring to UVic and taking an introduction to abstract algebra course, he knew his path was changing.

He explores connections between two areas of mathematics algebraic number theory, an ancient field of mathematics which deals with prime numbers, rational numbers, and their generalizations, and operator algebras, a relatively new field of math that was originally developed to model systems in quantum physics.

If you can come up with a strong enough connection between these two areas, you can give new approaches to solving problems and potentially solve some of the worlds most famous unresolved problems in pure mathematics, such as the Riemann hypothesis or Hilbert's 12th problem.

While one might imagine mathematics as being a solitary activity at a desk, Bruces experiences belie that.

Working with peoplediscussing problems and having a back and forth of ideas, working on a proofthat is the most enjoyable part of mathematics for me, Bruce says. To that end, he started a graduate-level seminar in his department, giving graduate students, post-docs and visitors a chance to present to their peers.

During his undergraduate degree, he completed a semester in Moscow. Since then, hes taken courses at the University of Wollongong in Australia, attended workshops at the Hausdorff Research Institute for Mathematics in Germany, and developed collaborations in the United Kingdom and Japan.

Once Bruce is able to travel internationally, hell be continuing onto Queen Mary, University of London, with a prestigious NSERC Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship, a prize which provides the best applicants with $70 000 per year in funding for two years.

Read more from the original source:

Pure math takes PhD across the world - University of Victoria News