In Memoriam
Researchers in this directory who are no longer with us
The Top 100 and the regional pages list living researchers only, so the directory stays accurate for anyone using it to make contact. This page remembers the 4 researchers from the ranked pool who have passed away, plus a separate listing of foundational figures whose careers predate the digital publication record our pipeline reads from. Each name links to a full profile.
From the ranked pool
| Name | Institution | Country | Years |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jean Bourgain | Institute for Advanced Study | US | 1954-2018 |
| Aleksandar Ivić | University of Belgrade | RS | 1949-2020 |
| Jacob Korevaar | University of Amsterdam | NL | 1923-2025 |
| Yoichi Motohashi | Nihon University | JP | 1944-2025 |
Foundational figures
The pipeline behind this site ranks researchers whose work appears on arXiv or in OpenAlex, which mostly means careers active from the mid-1990s onward. The names below predate that coverage. Their work is the bedrock on which modern research is built. They are listed in birth order. Click any name for a full profile.
| Name | Institution | Country | Years | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Viggo Brun | University of Oslo | NO | 1885-1978 | Created the modern sieve (Brun's sieve) and proved the sum of reciprocals of twin primes converges; Brun's constant is named for him |
| Pal Erdos | Hungarian Academy of Sciences | HU | 1913-1996 | Pioneering results on gaps between consecutive primes; the Erdos prize on prime gaps spurred the bounded-gaps breakthroughs |
| Yuri Linnik | Steklov Mathematical Institute | RU | 1915-1972 | Invented the large sieve and the dispersion method |
| Atle Selberg | Institute for Advanced Study | US | 1917-2007 | Fields Medalist; the Selberg sieve is a foundational tool in all modern work on gaps between primes |
| Heini Halberstam | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | GB | 1926-2014 | Co-author of the standard monograph Sieve Methods; the Elliott-Halberstam conjecture is central to bounded prime gaps |
| Wang Yuan | Chinese Academy of Sciences | CN | 1930-2021 | Major contributions to the circle method and sieve theory for problems on primes |
| Chen Jingrun | Chinese Academy of Sciences | CN | 1933-1996 | Proved Chen's theorem |
| Anatoly A. Karatsuba | Steklov Mathematical Institute | RU | 1937-2008 | Deep contributions to analytic number theory and the distribution of primes in short intervals |
A researcher missing here, or listed here in error? Email admin@wwitp.org and it will be corrected.