Peter Forrester

Peter Forrester is Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics within the Faculty of Science at the University of Melbourne. He earned his PhD from the Australian National University in 1985, followed by a postdoctoral position at Stony Brook University. In 1987, he joined La Trobe University as a lecturer, and in 1994, he took up an Australian Research Council senior research fellowship at the University of Melbourne, where he advanced to his current professorial role. Forrester served as President of the Australian Mathematical Society from 2012 to 2014. His honors include the Australian Mathematical Society Medal in 1993, election as Fellow of the Australian Mathematical Society in 2000, and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2004. He has secured multiple Australian Research Council Discovery Project grants, including projects on random matrix products, loop equations, integrability, stability and complexity in random matrix theory, and higher-order linear differential equations for unitary matrix integrals.

Forrester's research centers on mathematical physics, with primary focus on random matrix theory, encompassing analytic properties of eigenvalues and eigenvectors, symmetry constraints from Lie algebras and reflection groups, orthogonal polynomials, integrable systems via Painlevé equations and Riemann-Hilbert problems, and applications to quantum systems, Riemann zeros, chaotic dynamics, and statistical analysis of large datasets. Additional interests include Macdonald polynomial theory for quantum many-body Schrödinger operators with 1/r² potentials, statistical mechanics and combinatorics of lattice models, non-intersecting paths, Young tableaux, and log-potential Coulomb systems related to Kosterlitz-Thouless transitions. He is author of the monograph Log-gases and Random Matrices (Princeton University Press, 2010). Notable publications comprise Eight-vertex SOS model and generalized Rogers-Ramanujan-type identities (Journal of Statistical Physics, 1984), The spectrum edge of random matrix ensembles (Nuclear Physics B, 1993), The importance of the Selberg integral (Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 2008, with S. Warnaar), Spectral moments of the real Ginibre ensemble (2024), and On the gamma difference distribution (2024). His scholarship, with over 14,500 Google Scholar citations, has profoundly influenced random matrix theory and intersecting fields in mathematics, physics, and engineering.

Professional Email: pjforr@unimelb.edu.au