Ben Green, Waynflete Professor of Pure Mathematics in Oxford, will receive the inaugural I. Martin Isaacs Prize for Excellence in Mathematical Writing for his article “On Sárközy’s theorem for shifted primes,” published in Journal of the American Mathematical Society in 2024.
The citation reads: "Green successfully balances serving different audiences. Experts can readily extract the key ideas from his paper, while beginners can appreciate the motivation and context for the techniques. Those who wish to check the details will find every detail made available to them, while those who are trying to understand the big picture will also find what they need. Green’s paper is a joy to read, and his effort and skill in writing are a model of how to communicate technically forbidding mathematics."
Ben says: "I am very happy to be awarded this prize, as writing is something I have always taken quite seriously. I am particularly pleased that the prize is associated with I. Martin Isaacs, whose famous book on character theory I have owned and enjoyed looking at since I was an undergraduate. Although the cited paper is single-author, I have learned a great deal about how to write mathematics from several collaborators over many years. Let me mention in particular Terence Tao, with whom I have written over 30 joint papers and who taught me much about how to structure an argument; my first co-author, Imre Ruzsa, who writes with exceptional clarity and elegance; and my PhD supervisor, Timothy Gowers, whose papers are always a pleasure to read."
Ben Green was born and grew up in Bristol, England, attending local schools there. His undergraduate and graduate education was at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a PhD in 2003, supervised by Timothy Gowers. He was a Junior Research Fellow at Trinity, a Clay Research Fellow, and a PIMS Postdoctoral Fellow before returning to Cambridge as the first Herchel Smith Professor of Pure Mathematics in 2006. He moved to Oxford in 2013, where he is the Waynflete Professor of Pure Mathematics and a Fellow of Magdalen College. He is married and has two sons aged 8 and 6.
The I. Martin Isaacs Prize is awarded annually for excellence in writing of a research article published in a primary journal of the AMS in the past two years.
The prize will be presented at the 2025 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Seattle. Thank you to the AMS for allowing us to use their article.