Analysis is the study of estimates; Topology is the study of nearness; Combinatorics is the study of counting; Algebra is the study of tautologies.

Executive Summary: My research interests are in commutative algebra, with leanings toward the homological. My current research is in the representation theory of local rings. In practice, this means thinking about relationships between the structure of a ring and the structure of the category of maximal Cohen-Macaulay modules over the ring. My work is funded by the National Science Foundation and has been funded in the past by the National Security Agency and the Clay Mathematics Institute.

Even more Executive Summary: Here’s a song about my research.

You can jump to my list of papers and a list of talks — perhaps eventually I’ll get around to writing a longer blurb here.

Here’s my mathematical genealogy: PDF, PS. Thanks to the Mathematics Genealogy Project and Michael Renardy’s historical notes.

I’ve got some Coauthors and Colleagues.

One thing I’m working on at the moment is a list of basic papers in Commutative Algebra. Your help is welcomed.