Zhi-Wei Sun (Chinese: 孙智伟; pinyin: Sūn Zhìwěi; Wade-Giles: Sun Chihwei, born October 16, 1965) is a Chinese mathematician, working primarily on number theory, combinatorics, and group theory. Currently he works as a professor in Nanjing University.

Born in Huai'an, Jiangsu, Sun and his twin brother Sun Zhihong proved a theorem about what are now known as the Wall-Sun-Sun primes that guided the search for counterexamples to Fermat's last theorem.

In 2003, he presented a unified approach to three famous topics of Paul Erdős in combinatorial number theory: covering systems, restricted sumsets, and zero-sum problems or EGZ Theorem.[1]

He used q-series to prove that any natural number can be represented as a sum of an even square and two triangular numbers. He conjectured, and proved with B.-K. Oh, that each positive integer can be represented as a sum of a square, an odd square and a triangular number.[2] In 2009, he conjectured that any natural number can be written as the sum of two squares and a pentagonal number, as the sum of a triangular number, an even square and a pentagonal number, and as the sum of a square, a pentagonal number and a hexagonal number.[3] He also raised many open conjectures on congruences.[4]

His Erdős number is 2. He is the Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Modern Mathematics and Journal of Combinatorics and Number Theory.

See also

* Redmond–Sun conjecture
* Sun's curious identity

Notes

1. ^ Unification of zero-sum problems, subset sums and covers of \Z
2. ^ Mixed sums of squares and triangular numbers (III)
3. ^ On universal sums of polygonal numbers
4. ^ Open conjectures on congruences

External links

* Zhi-Wei Sun's homepage