Chandrashekhar B. Khare

Chandrashekar Khare is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles.  He is perhaps best known for solving, in conjunction with Jean-Pierre Wintenberger, the Serre conjecture, a critical step toward the solution of Fermat’s last  theorem; in July 2007, a two-week conference in Luminy, France, attended by most of the world’s specialists in this field, dealt exclusively with his groundbreaking proof. That same year he received the Fermat Prize, one of mathematic’s most coveted awards for his proof.

Born in Mumbai, India, Chandrashekhar Khare earned his B.A. (1989) and M.A.(1996) at the University of Cambridge, and his Ph.D. (1995) at the California Institute of Technology. In his dissertation, he solved the "congruences in the (p,p) case" that had long stymied mathematicians.

After receiving his Ph.D, he returned to Mumbai as a Visiting Fellow at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research; he remained there for nine years, becoming a Fellow in 1996 and an Associate Professor in 2001.  In 1999, he was named Young Scientist of the Year by the Indian Science Academy. During his last three years at TIFR, he also held an appointment as an Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Utah, a position he held until his move to UCLA in 2007. He has been a permanent U.S. resident since 2007.

Throughout his career, Mr. Khare has focused primarily on Numbers theory.  His Guggenheim Fellowship project was also in this discipline: a study of motives, Galois representations, and automorphic forms.