FoS won Outstanding Researcher Award

24 Apr 2015 NUS scientist won the Outstanding Researcher Award in the area of Langlands program.

The Outstanding Researcher Award this year was won by Prof GAN Wee Teck from the Department of Mathematics for his work in the area of Langlands program, which uses representational theoretic tools (such as modular forms) for solving number theoretic problems. In particular, he has done extensive work on the theory of theta correspondence, an area which was initiated in the 1970’s. These areas have been at the forefront of number theoretic research for the past half a century.

There are several basic conjectures in the theory of theta correspondence which have resisted the efforts of many researchers for the past 30 years.

In the last 5 years, Prof Gan, together with his collaborators, has resolved several of these outstanding problems, such as the Howe duality conjecture, the epsilon dichotomy conjecture and the Siegel-Weil formula. He has also applied these advances to resolve some open problems in the Langlands program, such as cases of the local Langlands conjecture and the Gross-Prasad conjecture.

Recently, Prof Gan, together with his student GAO Fan and Yale-NUS Associate Professor Martin WEISSMAN are working towards a speculative extension of the Langlands program from its traditional domain of linear algebraic groups to the setting of nonlinear covering groups.

The statement above shows the Howe Duality Conjecture.