Young Researcher Award

Associate Professor CHAN Heng Huat

PhD, MSc (Ill, Urbana), BSc (NUS)
Department of Mathematics

Current Research Portfolio
  • Number theory
  • Works of Srinivasa Ramanujan, a mathematical genius of the early 20th century

Research Achievements
  • provided an elegant proof of Ramanujan's partition identities
  • constructed new values for the famous Roger-Ramanujan continued fraction
  • found new formulae for the number of representations of integers as a sum of even squares
  • developed new theories of elliptic functions to alternative bases
  • demonstrated how the understanding of the class groups of an imaginary quadratic field can lead to explicit evaluation of rapid convergent series
  • generated a record-breaking series associated with 1/pi which converges at the rate of 73/74 decimal places per term

Research Strengths
Never stops questioning

Publication Credit
  • 39 papers published in premier and leading journals such as Crelle's Journal, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society and Advances in Mathematics
  • Editor of The Ramanujan Journal and the South-east Asian Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences
  • Reviewer for Mathematical Reviews and Math Zentralblatt

Service to Community
actively promotes interest in mathematics amongst the young. Gives public lectures to junior college students and contributes articles to Mathematical Medley, a student magazine published by the Singapore Mathematical Society

International Standing
  • delivered twin lectures with Professor Jean-Pierre Serre, a leading mathematician, at a number theory seminar jointly organised by the University of Paris VI and VII, 2002
  • granted membership, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, 1995-1996

Awards and Accolades
  • Singapore Youth Awards, National Youth Council, Singapore, 2003
  • Commonwealth Fellowship, Association of Commonwealth Universities, 2001
  • Young Scientist Award, Singapore National Academy of Science, 1999

Research Aspiration
to write a book in the manner of D.A. Cox, J.M. Borwein and P.B. Borwein, by starting off with an interesting problem and introducing different areas of mathematics as results are being proven.