Serge Lang (born May 19, 1927) is a mathematician who is known for his work in algebra and for writing a variety of mathematics textbooks, including the very influential Algebra; he won a Leroy P Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition (1999) from the American Mathematical Society. In 1960, he won the sixth Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Algebra for his paper, Unramified class field theory over function fields in several variables, Annals of Mathematics, Series 2, volume 64 (1956), pp. 285-325. Maxwell A. Rosenlicht also won that year as well. He is currently a professor of mathematics at Yale University.
He was a student of Emil Artin at Princeton University, where he was awarded his Ph.D. in 1951.
In addition to being a mathematician, Lang spends much of his time engaged in politics, on a "whistleblowing" crusade to challenge anyone he believes is misusing science or mathematics to further their own goals. In 1986, he challenged the nomination of political scientist Samuel P. Huntington to the National Academy of Sciences, claiming that his research consisted of "political opinions masquerading as science". The challenge was successful.
Lang keeps his political correspondence in "files", some of which are published in his book Challenges (ISBN 0387948619).
His most controversial political stance is that he is an AIDS dissident; he maintains that the common belief that HIV causes AIDS has not been backed up by sufficient scientific research, yet for political/commercial reasons further research questioning this belief is suppressed. In public he is very outspoken about this point.
In recent years, Lang has expanded his "challenges" to include the humanities. For example, Lang fought the decision by Yale University to hire Daniel Kevles , a historian of science, because he disagreed with Kevles' book The Baltimore Case.
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Last updated: 05-23-2005 13:52:55
