Agata Smoktunowicz

Agata Smoktunowicz FRSE (born 12 October 1973) is a Polish mathematician who works as a professor at the University of Edinburgh. Her research is in abstract algebra.[1][2]

Agata Smoktunowicz
Born	October 12, 1973
Alma mater	University of Warsaw, Polish Academy of Sciences (PhD)
Awards	Whitehead Prize of the London Mathematical Society (2006), European Mathematical Society Prize (2008), Sir Edmund Whittaker Memorial Prize (2009), Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2009), fellows of the American Mathematical Society (2012)
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematician
Institutions	University of Edinburgh
Thesis	Radicals of polynomial rings (2000)
Doctoral advisor	Edmund Puczyłowski

Contributions

Smoktunowicz's contributions to mathematics include constructing noncommutative nil rings, solving a "famous problem" formulated in 1970 by Irving Kaplansky.[1][3] She proved the Artin–Stafford gap conjecture according to which the Gelfand–Kirillov dimension of a graded domain cannot fall within the open interval (2,3).[1][4] She also found an example of a nil ideal of a ring R that does not lift to a nil ideal of the polynomial ring R[X], disproving a conjecture of Amitsur and hinting that the Köthe conjecture might be false.[5][6][7]

Awards and honours

Smoktunowicz was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2006.[1] She won the Whitehead Prize of the London Mathematical Society in 2006, the European Mathematical Society Prize in 2008, and the Sir Edmund Whittaker Memorial Prize of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society in 2009.[1] In 2009, she was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh,[8] and in 2012, she became one of the inaugural fellows of the American Mathematical Society.[9] She also won the Polish Academy of Sciences annual research prize in 2018.[10]

Education and career

Smoktunowicz earned a master's degree from the University of Warsaw in 1997, a PhD in 1999 from the Institute of Mathematics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and a habilitation in 2007, again from the Polish Academy of Sciences. After temporary positions at Yale University and the University of California, San Diego, she joined the University of Edinburgh in 2005, and was promoted to professor there in 2007.[2]

Selected publications

• Smoktunowicz, Agata (2000), "Polynomial rings over nil rings need not be nil", Journal of Algebra, 233 (2): 427–436, doi:10.1006/jabr.2000.8451, MR 1793911.
• Huh, Chan; Lee, Yang; Smoktunowicz, Agata (2002), "Armendariz rings and semicommutative rings", Communications in Algebra, 30 (2): 751–761, doi:10.1081/AGB-120013179, MR 1883022.
• Smoktunowicz, Agata (2002), "A simple nil ring exists", Communications in Algebra, 30 (1): 27–59, doi:10.1081/AGB-120006478, MR 1880660.
• Smoktunowicz, Agata (2006), "There are no graded domains with GK dimension strictly between 2 and 3", Inventiones Mathematicae, 164 (3): 635–640, Bibcode:2006InMat.164..635S, doi:10.1007/s00222-005-0489-1, MR 2221134.

References

1. Agata Smoktunowicz Archived 26 August 2014 at the Wayback Machine, European Women in Mathematics, retrieved 31 December 2014.
2. Currculum vitae Archived 30 December 2014 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved 31 December 2014.
3. Smoktunowicz (2002). For the attribution to Kaplansky, see MR1880660.
4. Smoktunowicz (2006).
5. Smoktunowicz (2000).
6. Lam, T.Y., A First Course in Noncommutative Rings (2001), p.171.
7. Nielsen, Pace P. (2013), "Simplifying Smoktunowicz's extraordinary example", Communications in Algebra, 41 (11): 4339–4350, doi:10.1080/00927872.2012.695838, MR 3169522.
8. Fellows, Royal Society of Edinburgh, retrieved 31 December 2014.
9. List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society, retrieved 31 December 2014.
10. "Agata Smoktunowicz - Prizes - Edinburgh Research Explorer". www.research.ed.ac.uk. Retrieved 16 January 2019.