1954-

Belgian-born mathematician who was awarded a Fields Medal for his innovative work in several areas of mathematical analysis. Bourgain's much-lauded work includes solutions for long-standing problems in Banach space theory and harmonic analysis. His work has improved the understanding of convexity in high dimensions, ergodic theory, the circle maximal function, and nonlinear partial differential equations, which are used in theoretical (mathematical) physics. In 1994 Bourgain was appointed to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.