A professor who has devoted his career to resolving the mysteries of higher mathematics has solved two separate, fundamental problems that have perplexed mathematicians for decades.

Pham Tiep, the Joshua Barlaz Distinguished Professor of Mathematics in the Rutgers School of Arts and Science’s Department of Mathematics, has completed a proof of the 1955 Height Zero Conjecture posed by Richard Brauer, a leading German-American mathematician who died in 1977. Proof of the conjecture – commonly viewed as one of the most outstanding challenges in a field of math known as the representation theory of finite groups – was published in the September issue of the Annals of Mathematics.