Martin John Taylor (born 18 February 1952)
Early life and education
Taylor was born in Leicester in 1952 and educated at Wyggeston Grammar School. He gained a first class degree from the University of Oxford where he was a student of Pembroke College, Oxford in 1973, and a PhD from King's College London with a thesis on Galois representations in 1976 supervised by Albrecht Fröhlich.
Career and Research
Taylor's early research investigated various properties and structures of algebraic numbers. In 1981 he proved the Fröhlich conjecture relating the symmetries of algebraic integers to the behaviour of certain analytic functions called Artin L-functions. More recently his research has led him to study various aspects of arithmetic geometry: in particular, he and his collaborators have demonstrated how geometric properties of zeros of integral polynomials in many variables can be determined by the behaviour of associated L-functions.
Awards and honours
Taylor was awarded the Whitehead Prize by the London Mathematical Society in 1982 and shared the Adams Prize in 1983. He was President of the London Mathematical Society from 1998 to 2000 and in 2004 was appointed Physical Secretary and Vice-President of the Royal Society. Taylor received an honorary Doctorate of Science from the University of East Anglia in July 2012.
Personal life
Taylor's hobbies include fly fishing and hill walking, and he is a supporter of Manchester United F.C.. He married Sharon Lynn Marlow in 1973 and has four children.