David Conlon

{{short description|Irish mathematician (born 1982)|bot=PearBOT 5}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} {{Infobox scientist | honorific_prefix = | name =  | honorific_suffix = | native_name = | native_name_lang = | image = David Conlon October 2020.jpg  | image_size = | image_upright = | landscape =  | alt = | caption = Conlon in 2020 | birth_name =  | birth_date = {{Birth year and age|1982}} | birth_place = Ireland | death_date =  | death_place = | death_cause =  | resting_place = | resting_place_coordinates =  | other_names = | siglum = | pronounce = | citizenship =  | nationality =  | fields = Mathematics | workplaces = University of Oxford<br />California Institute of Technology | patrons = | education = University of Cambridge (PhD, 2009)<br />Trinity College Dublin (2003) | alma_mater = | thesis_title = Upper Bounds for Ramsey Numbers | thesis_url =  | thesis_year = 2009 | doctoral_advisor = Timothy Gowers | academic_advisors = | doctoral_students = | notable_students = | known_for = | awards = Whitehead Prize (2019)<br />European Prize in Combinatorics (2011) | author_abbrev_bot = | author_abbrev_zoo = | spouse =  | partner =  | children = | parents = | father = | mother = | relatives = | signature =  | signature_type =  | signature_alt = | website =  | footnotes = }} '''David Conlon''' (born 1982) is an Irish mathematician who is a Professor of Mathematics at the California Institute of Technology. His research interests are in Hungarian-style combinatorics, particularly Ramsey theory, extremal graph theory, combinatorial number theory, and probabilistic methods in combinatorics.<ref name="David Conlon's Oxford Contact Page">{{cite web |title=Prof. David Conlon |url=http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dconlon/ |work=Caltech Website |publisher=Caltech |accessdate=1 June 2021}}</ref> He proved the first superpolynomial improvement on the Erdős–Szekeres bound on diagonal Ramsey numbers. He won the European Prize in Combinatorics in 2011 for his work in Ramsey theory and for his progress on Sidorenko's conjecture, and the Whitehead Prize in 2019.

== Life == Conlon represented Ireland in the International Mathematical Olympiad in 1998 and 1999.<ref>{{cite web|title=International Mathematical Olympiad Results for Ireland|url=https://www.imo-official.org/country_individual_r.aspx?code=IRL|accessdate=7 July 2017}}</ref> He was an undergraduate in Trinity College Dublin, where he was elected a Scholar in 2001<ref name="TCD Scholars">{{cite web|title=TCD Scholars Since 1925|url=http://www.tcdlife.ie/scholars/scholar/about-list.php|accessdate=7 July 2017}}</ref> and graduated in 2003. He earned a PhD from Cambridge University in 2009.<ref>{{MathGenealogy |id=138270 }}</ref>

In 2019 he moved to California Institute of Technology, having been a fellow of Wadham College, Oxford and Professor of Discrete Mathematics in the Mathematics Institute at the University of Oxford.<ref name=":0">{{cite web|title=Curriculum Vitae – David Conlon|url=http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dconlon/cv.pdf|accessdate=1 June 2021}}</ref>

Conlon has worked in Ramsey theory, and he proved the first superpolynomial improvement on the Erdős–Szekeres bound on diagonal Ramsey numbers.<ref name="Paper on Ramsey Numbers">{{cite web |last=Conlon |first=David |title=A New Upper Bound for Diagonal Ramsey Numbers |url=https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~dc340/RamseyUpper.pdf |work=www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk |publisher=University of Cambridge |accessdate=25 April 2014 |archive-date=4 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304024326/https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~dc340/RamseyUpper.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref> He won the European Prize in Combinatorics in 2011, for his work in Ramsey theory and for his progress on Sidorenko's conjecture that, for any bipartite graph ''H'', uniformly random graphons have the fewest subgraphs isomorphic to ''H'' when the edge density is fixed.<ref>{{citation|url=http://mta.hu/matematika_hirek/a-kombinatorika-kivalosagai-az-akademian-128508|title=A kombinatorika kiválóságai az Akadémián|publisher=Hungarian Academy of Sciences|language=Hungarian|date=September 1, 2011|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20131106013006/http://mta.hu/matematika_hirek/a-kombinatorika-kivalosagai-az-akademian-128508|archivedate=November 6, 2013}}.</ref> He was awarded the Whitehead Prize in 2019 "in recognition of his many contributions to combinatorics".<ref>{{cite web|title=Whitehead Prize 2019 Citation for Professor David Conlon|url=https://www.lms.ac.uk/sites/default/files/files/d_conlon.pdf|work=London Mathematical Society|publisher=LMS|accessdate=1 June 2021}}</ref>

From 2015 to 2020, Conlon was the Editor-in-Chief of the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics.<ref name=":0" />

==References== {{Reflist}}

==External links== *{{MathGenealogy |id=138270 }} *{{cite web|url=http://www.pma.caltech.edu/people/david-conlon|title=David Conlon's home page at Caltech|access-date=2026-04-24}} *{{cite web|url=https://www.its.caltech.edu/~dconlon/|title=David Conlon's home page|access-date=2026-04-24}} *[http://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/contact/details/conlond Home page] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120424170823/http://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/contact/details/conlond |date=24 April 2012 }} at Oxford *{{Google scholar id}} *{{IMO results |id=5361 }}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Conlon, David}} Category:1982 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of Trinity College Dublin Category:Alumni of the University of Cambridge Category:California Institute of Technology faculty Category:Combinatorialists Category:International Mathematical Olympiad participants Category:21st-century Irish mathematicians Category:Scholars of Trinity College Dublin Category:Place of birth missing (living people)