# Aaron Pixton

Aaron C. Pixton (born January 13, 1986) is an American mathematician at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He works in enumerative geometry, and is also known for his chess playing, where he is a FIDE Master.

Aaron Pixton
Aaron Pixton at the Workshop Moduli Spaces in Algebraic Geometry, Oberwolfach 2013
BornJanuary 13, 1986
NationalityAmerican
Alma materPrinceton University
AwardsMorgan Prize (2009)
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsHarvard University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

## Early life and education

Pixton was born in Binghamton, New York; his father, Dennis Pixton, is a retired professor of mathematics at Binghamton University. He grew up in Vestal, New York. While a student at Vestal Senior High School, he scored a perfect score on the American Mathematics Competition three times from 2002–2004.[1] He went on to the International Mathematical Olympiad in 2003 and 2004 to win consecutive gold medals.[2]

While an undergraduate at Princeton University, Pixton was a three-time Putnam Fellow. For his research conducted as an undergraduate, he was awarded the 2009 Morgan Prize.[3] In 2008, he received a Churchill Scholarship to the University of Cambridge.[4] Pixton received his Ph.D. in 2013 from Princeton under the supervision of Rahul Pandharipande; his dissertation was The tautological ring of the moduli space of curves.[5]

## Career

Pixton was appointed as a Clay Research Fellow for a term of five years beginning in 2013.[6] After two years as a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University, he became an assistant professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2015.[7] In 2017 he won a Sloan Research Fellowship.[8]

## Chess

Pixton is also a former child prodigy in chess. He was the 2001 U.S. Cadet Champion,[9] the 2002 US Junior Chess Champion,[10][11] and had a win against the former US Champion Joel Benjamin in 2003.[12]

## Selected publications

• Pandharipande, Rahul; Pixton, Aaron; Zvonkine, Dimitri (2015), "Relations on ${\displaystyle {\overline {\mathcal {M}}}_{g,n}}$ via 3-spin structures", Journal of the American Mathematical Society, 28 (1): 279–309, doi:10.1090/S0894-0347-2014-00808-0, MR 3264769
• Janda, Felix; Pandharipande, Rahul; Pixton, Aaron; Zvonkine, Dimitri (2017), "Double ramification cycles on the moduli spaces of curves", Publications Mathématiques de l'IHÉS, 125: 221–266, arXiv:1602.04705, doi:10.1007/s10240-017-0088-x, MR 3668650
• Pandharipande, Rahul; Pixton, Aaron (2017), "Gromov–Witten/Pairs correspondence for the quintic 3-fold", Journal of the American Mathematical Society, 30 (2): 389–449, arXiv:1206.5490, doi:10.1090/jams/858, MR 3600040
• Oberdieck, Georg; Pixton, Aaron (2018), "Holomorphic anomaly equations and the Igusa cusp form conjecture", Inventiones Mathematicae, 213 (2): 507–587, arXiv:1706.10100, doi:10.1007/s00222-018-0794-0, MR 3827207

## References

1. "2002 AMC 10A/B & AMC 12A/B Perfect Papers". University of Nebraska–Lincoln. May 24, 2002. Archived from the original on August 23, 2006. Retrieved 2006-05-24.; "2003 - AMC 10 & 12, A&B Perfect Papers". University of Nebraska–Lincoln. March 30, 2004. Archived from the original on August 23, 2006. Retrieved 2006-05-24.; "2004 - AMC 10 & 12, A&B Perfect Papers". University of Nebraska–Lincoln. June 17, 2004. Archived from the original on 2006-04-07. Retrieved 2006-05-24.
2. "2003 IMO USA Team". University of Nebraska–Lincoln. September 24, 2003. Archived from the original on 2006-05-16. Retrieved 2006-05-24.; "2004 IMO USA Team". University of Nebraska–Lincoln. July 28, 2004. Archived from the original on 2006-04-30. Retrieved 2006-05-24.; Aaron Pixton's results at International Mathematical Olympiad; IMO 2004 US Team Results in Athens, Greece
3. "2009 Morgan Prize" (PDF), Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 56 (4): 502–503, April 2009
4. Students win Churchill Scholarships
5. "Aaron Pixton". Clay Mathematics Institute. 2013.
6. Five professors join the School of Science this fall, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, September 25, 2015
7. 2017 Sloan Research Fellows, American Mathematical Society, March 8, 2017
8. Peters, Jack (August 10, 2001), "Young and Old Strive to Master the Intricacies of Ancient Game", Los Angeles Times
9. "Revived D.C. Open to honor Shapiro", Washington Times, August 3, 2002
10. Benjamin, Joel (2018), Better Thinking, Better Chess: How a Grandmaster Finds his Moves, New In Chess, Game 19, pp. 49–51, ISBN 9789056918088