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Durham, NC
Duke University has awarded Samit Dasgupta with James B. Duke Distinguished Professorship in the Department of Mathematics. Dasgupta is part of 31 faculty members to whom Duke University has awarded distinguished professorships. Duke university will recognize Dasgupta in a ceremony at the Washington Duke Inn on May 14.
“I am very proud to recognize these outstanding faculty colleagues with distinguished professorships,” said President Vincent E. Price. “Through their extraordinary scholarship and teaching, they are advancing solutions, inventions and cures that will uplift humankind and make a lasting difference in the world.”
Distinguished professorships honor faculty who are well-established members of the Duke academic community and have also achieved distinction as creative scholars in their field or in their ability to transcend disciplines.
Dasgupta’s research focus on algebraic number theory, specifically the explicit construction of units in number fields and points on abelian varieties. There are many classical conjectures regarding the relationships between these elements and special values of L-functions, such as the conjectures of Stark, Birch-Swinnerton-Dyer, and Beilinson. In his research he has made progress on these conjectures as well as stated and studied various generalizations and refinements that go beyond the world of L-functions. Much of his work uses the theory of modular forms and their associated Galois representations in order to shed light on these problems.
Dasgupta has completed his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004 and received his Bachelor’s degree from Harvard University in 1999.
“Congratulations to these exceptional scholars on earning distinguished professorships from Duke University,” said Provost Alec D. Gallimore. “Their contributions to their fields and to Duke’s intellectual community are truly impressive and I am proud to call them colleagues.”
During its February meeting, Duke’s Board of Trustees approved the awarding of Distinguished Professorships to these faculty, effective July 1, 2025, or thereafter.
