Woodrow Dale Brownawell (born April 21, 1942) is an American mathematician who has performed research in number theory and algebraic geometry. He is a Distinguished Professor emeritus at Pennsylvania State University,[1] and is particularly known for his proof of explicit degree bounds that can be used to turn Hilbert's Nullstellensatz into an effective algorithm.[2]
Brownawell was born in Grundy County, Missouri;[1] his father was a farmer and train inspector.[3] He earned a double baccalaureate in German and mathematics (with highest distinction) in 1964 from the University of Kansas,[1] and after studying for a year at the University of Hamburg[1] (at which he met Eva, the woman he later married)[3] he returned to the US for graduate study at Cornell University.[1] His graduate advisor, Stephen Schanuel, moved to Stony Brook University in 1969, and Brownawell followed him there for a year,[1] but earned his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1970.[1] That year, he joined the Penn State faculty, and he remained there until his retirement in 2013.[1]
Brownawell and Michel Waldschmidt shared the 1986 Hardy–Ramanujan Prize for their independent proofs that at least one of the two numbers
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