Peter Swinnerton-Dyer

Sir Peter Swinnerton-Dyer
Peter Swinnerton-Dyer at the workshop
"Explicit methods in number theory" in Oberwolfach, 2007
Born
Henry Peter Francis Swinnerton-Dyer

(1927-08-02)2 August 1927
Died26 December 2018(2018-12-26) (aged 91)
NationalityBritish
Alma materUniversity of Cambridge
Known forBirch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture
AwardsPólya Prize (2006)
Sylvester Medal (2006)
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsUniversity of Cambridge
Doctoral advisorsJohn Littlewood
André Weil
Doctoral studentsJean-Louis Colliot-Thélène
Miles Reid

Sir Henry Peter Francis Swinnerton-Dyer, 16th Baronet, KBE, FRS (2 August 1927 26 December 2018) was an English mathematician specialising in number theory at the University of Cambridge. As a mathematician he was best known for his part in the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture relating algebraic properties of elliptic curves to special values of L-functions, which was developed with Bryan Birch during the first half of the 1960s with the help of machine computation, and for his work on the Titan operating system.