John Henry Coates: January 26, 1945-May 9, 2022

[摘要] The Australian mathematician John Coates was born and brought up on a farm in the ManningValley, New South Wales. During his long career, he held positions at several elite institutionsin Australia，France,England,and the United States, but the last 36 years of his life werespent in England. When he passed away, he was at the University of Cambridge. Earlier, asan undergraduate student at the Australian National University,John had the good fortune tohave Bernhard Neumann and Hanna Neumann as teachers. But, it was Kurt Mahler who hada more decisive influence on John choosing Number theory as his passion. After a brief stintat the Ecole Normale Superieure,Paris,John went to Cambridge and worked on his doctoraldissertation under the supervision of Alan Baker. His work was on p-adic analogues of Baker'sfamous method, and was a brilliant piece of work. After his doctorate, he spent some yearsin Harvard University, and Stanford University after which he returned to take up a positionin Cambridge in 1975. After this also, he moved around and held positions at the AustralianNational University, the Universite de Paris XI,Orsay，and the Ecole Normale Superieure,where he was the Director of Mathematics until 1985.Finally, in 1986, he moved to Cambridgeand remained there until his death.

[学科分类] 社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）