John Torrence Tate was born on March 13, 1925 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. Early in life, John showed a fascination with mathematical puzzles, and while in high school, he delved into problems in number theory. Feeling that he wasn’t sufficiently to pursue a career in mathematics, he enrolled in physics at Harvard and graduated in 1946. However, while enrolled in graduate school in Princeton, he discovered that his real interest was mathematics and he switched programs.
In 1950, Tate was awarded his doctorate for his thesis in which he introduced harmonic analysis into number theory, using adeles to develop the theory of automorphic forms. In the decades that followed he made major contributions to analytic number theory including advances in class field theory and the p-adic representations of the absolute Galois group of a p-adic field,
Among the many awards he received was the prestigious Abel Prize, awarded on March 24, 2010 by the President of the Norwegian Academy of Science for his “vast and lasting impact on the theory of numbers.”
Reflecting on the permanency of mathematics, he asserted, “A good theorem lasts forever. Once proved, it will always stay proved, and other mathematicians are free to use it and build on it as they please, sometimes to great effect.”
