Ph.D. Student Matt Bowen awarded 2023 Carl Herz Prize

Matt Bowen, a doctoral student in mathematics at McGill University, has been awarded the 2023 Carl Herz Prize by the Institut des sciences mathématiques for his preprint Monochromatic products and sums in 2-colorings of ℕ, a new proof of the special case of Hindman’s conjecture when there are two colours.

After completing his B.Sc. and Master’s degree at Carnegie Mellon University, Bowen came to McGill in 2019, where he is now completing his Ph.D. under the supervision of Marcin Sabok and Anush Tserunyan in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics.

“With four articles published or submitted as well as six preprints, he has already demonstrated that he is a creative and independent mathematician, well-known in the field of measurable combinatorics and Ramsey theory,” wrote the ISM in its announcement. “His work was recently cited in Quanta magazine, and a separate article devoted to his research entitled ‘Coloring by Numbers Reveals Arithmetic Patterns in Fractions’, has just been published.”

Bowen plans to complete his Ph.D. this summer and pursue a position as a postdoctoral research fellow at Oxford University, working under the supervision of Ben Green.