Timothy Gowers

Timothy Gowers was born in 1963 into a family of musicians. He was a chorister at King's College Cambridge from 1973 to 1976, returning to Cambridge in 1982 where he was an undergraduate, PhD student and research fellow in mathematics at Trinity College. From 1991 to 1995 he was a lecturer at University College London, before returning to Cambridge, initially as a lecturer, then as Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics, and then as a Royal Society Research Professor. In 2000 he became the holder of the chair in combinatorics at the Collège de France, He retains a part-time position at Cambridge. He has received several awards, including a Fields Medal in 1998. He is the author of Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction and the main editor of The Princeton Companion to Mathematics.