In Memory of Professor Emeritus Benedict Gross

It is with heavy hearts that we say farewell to Professor Emeritus Benedict Gross, who passed away in December, 2025. Gross joined the Harvard Department of Mathematics as an undergraduate in the ’60s and taught here until 2015. His academic career was long and storied, and no one embodied the math department—or the university as a whole—more than him.

Gross’ contributions to number theory, algebraic geometry, modular forms, and group representations earned him a MacArthur Fellowship in 1986. In 1987, he received the Cole Prize of the American Mathematical Society alongside Don Zagier and Dorian M. Goldfeld for their work formulating and proving the Gross-Zagier formula, which relates the height of Heegner points with the central derivatives of the zeta function of the corresponding elliptical curves. Gross was a fellow of the American Mathematical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. But for all his accomplishments and contributions, he was a perfect example of how a career in mathematics is not always a straightforward journey.

View Gross’ Eilenberg Lectures.

Below, you will find stories, anecdotes, and recollections about Gross’ impact on the lives of his friends, colleagues, and former students. Thank you to everyone who contributed!

Remembering Benedict Gross

“Other than my parents, no one has had a more decisive influence on my life that Dick Gross, my thesis supervisor and an intellectual father figure. I have spent many pleasant decades reflecting on the Gross-Zagier formula, like a rabbinical scholar poring over some profound passage in the Talmud. We all mourn the loss of a teacher whose ideas are echoed in the work of those he inspired. May his memory be a blessing.” — Henri Darmon | Former graduate student | Distinguished James McGill Professor at the McGill University Department of Mathematics and Statistics

“Though I was an undergraduate math concentrator and later a Benjamin Peirce Fellow there, I didn’t have extensive interaction with Dick. Yet every interaction was pure encouragement from him. When I was thinking of not completing a senior thesis, he called me personally and urged me to complete the work I’d done. When I was encountering resistance from a problem that I had been trying hard to solve, he came by briefly just to tell me how much he’d enjoy seeing me solve that problem. But what really astonished me was when a few years after I had left math to try out life as an oil painter, Dick Gross invited me to make a painting for him which he would hang in his office in the math department. That was huge for me because it showed that even after leaving math, he was still thinking of ways to be helpful and supportive of whatever I was doing. What a beautiful soul!” — Ken Fan | Former student and Benjamin Peirce Fellow | Director of Girls’ Angle: A Math Club for Girls

“Dick was a fount of energy, insight, and wisdom: both mathematical and general. His influence is strongly felt; his presence is sorely missed.” — Dan Freed | Shiing-Shen Chern Professor of Mathematics and Director of the Center of Mathematical Sciences and Applications (CMSA) at Harvard University

“I first met Dick at a bus station in Utrecht. I was a young graduate student attending F. Oort’s birthday conference and I dimly remembered him from the previous day. I introduced myself to him and him to me, but I only had a vague memory that I had heard his name before. Well, it turned out we were both commuting to Amsterdam and we ended up taking the same bus and train. As I didn’t know “who I was talking to,” I had no qualms asking very personal questions that he answered very openly and sincerely, discussing growing up in New Jersey, what Jewish identity means, why he chose to be a mathematician and finally getting to some very concrete math questions I had about Hilbert-Blumenthal three-folds. He was kind enough to be interested in my own life growing up in Israel, my aspirations and rather naive mathematical ideas. I think that this chance meeting is the reason he then agreed to be my postdoctoral mentor at Harvard, which was a pivotal moment in my career.” — Eyal Goren | Former mentee | Professor at the McGill University Department of Mathematics and Statistics

“I first met Dick as an arriving graduate student at Harvard in Fall 2010. He was an amazing advisor. During my stay at Harvard, he also had many graduate students. Every Wednesday I tried to find him before the number theory seminar to report my progress and ask for guidance, then go to the seminar talk. Dick listened with his characteristic enthusiasm, and for innocent graduate students his questions for speakers were sometimes more illuminating than the talks. Being a graduate student is fun but also there are many frustrating days with little progress, and in retrospect I certainly asked Dick more than my share of dumb questions, but Dick was always patient and encouraging. Dick often says, “Graduate students are smarter than we are, but we know more. When the students know enough? We graduate them.” Many of us became better at our jobs because we had the chance to watch Dick do his, and for that privilege I am forever grateful!” — Chao Li | Former graduate student | Associate Professor at the Columbia University Department of Mathematics

“Dick Gross had an enormous impact on my mathematical career. As a new PhD student at MIT and frequent participant in seminars and courses in 507 at Harvard, I had met Dick a few times and asked him one or two questions. When my advisor Harold Stark moved out to San Diego, I got up my courage to ask Dick if I could bug him semi-regularly for advice, and he readily agreed. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Dick was an inspirational figure for me as a scholar, as a teacher, and as an administrator.

I benefited from having two advisors (Stark was global advisor and Gross my local one) especially since they had such differing styles. Aside from teaching me so much about Stark’s conjectures and overall philosophy, Dick also pushed me to learn more modern algebraic techniques and he was always reassuring and encouraging when I struggled. His support was instrumental at every stage of my career, both for the recommendations that helped me secure employment, and his personal encouragement and answers to numerous math questions I would pose whenever we met. Dick was an excellent correspondent, whose letters were so well-written you could just publish them as articles without any edits. I want to mention that Dick was extremely well organized in his note-taking, keeping track of articles, and sharing his notes with his students and colleagues. He gave a talk at Caltech once in celebration of the life and work of Olga Taussky-Todd: he had attached a stamp Olga had given him years ago to his notes for the talk.

A photo of a man and a woman standing next to each other, the man with his arm around the woman.
Benedict Gross (right) and wife Jill Mesirov (left) at their San Diego home in August, 2024. Photo courtesy of Farshid Hajir.

I stayed in touch with Dick after he retired to San Diego and had a chance to visit him and Jill in San Diego in 2024. Although he had been struggling with a variety of health issues, his attitude was still positive and his mind razor sharp. Dick contributed to mathematics but also to the Harvard College, in leading the revision of the undergraduate core curriculum, in leading the Math Department, in fantastic courses, inspiring lectures. As Dean of Harvard College, he had an outstanding record in encouraging faculty to place a greater emphasis on training of undergraduates, in raising money, and many other areas. Aside from advancing number theory and algebra, he is a model for how a mathematician can have impact on the university at large and on higher education more broadly. For those of us who came under his influence, we can be eternally grateful for all he has meant to us as mathematicians and as people.” — Farshid Hajir | Former graduate student | Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Mathematics and Statistics

“I remember Dick Gross as one of the kindest and most optimistic people in all of academia. He was tremendously inspiring and enthusiastic. He had an extremely positive outlook on life, on people, and on the world. He was both a great mathematician and a skilled administrator. I often thought that Dick would be the ideal President of Harvard or Director of IAS. Dick was the first face of Harvard for me. Because of him I concluded that Harvard must be the perfect place. I met Dick in 2002, when he was chairman of the math department. He asked me—out of the blue—if I had any interest in coming to Harvard. I was very surprised and deeply honored by this question. Two weeks later, Dick sent me an email to Princeton (I was at IAS at that time): he had talked to his Department, his Department had instructed him to talk to the Dean, he had talked to the Dean and the President and I should start looking for houses. I remember that several months later he picked me up with a tiny Honda Insight from the Charles Hotel. When I told him we were interested in living in Lincoln, he said you can ask Wilfried Schmid for advice. A few days later I reported back to Dick: Wilfried loves Lincoln, but he thinks the school is bad. Dick replied: Don’t worry. Wilfried would critique the Athenian Academy or the Elysian fields.” — Martin Nowak | Professor of Mathematics and of Biology at the Harvard University Department of Mathematics and Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology

“I joined Harvard as a graduate student in 1985, the same year that Dick Gross joined as a full Professor, moving from Brown University. That year he gave a graduate course on “Heights and L-series”, which was like any other lecture course he gave, brilliantly delivered, full of insightful examples and remarks. This is when I became his student. Later on we collaborated on many projects, and it was my good fortune to count him as one of my closest collaborators, corresponding off and on till almost the very end. With the passing, the world of Mathematics has lost a gem, a brilliant mathematician and a great expositor, and I have lost my teacher, mentor and a friend.” — Dipendra Prasad | Former graduate student | Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay Department of Mathematics

“Dick was one of the most vibrant and energetic people I’ve ever met. I was a Ph.D. student of his in the 90s, at a time when he had nine students at once. His generosity with his time and attention never failed to amaze me. Despite all of the demands put on him by supervising such a large group, he always showed real warmth and interest when we spoke. I learned an enormous amount from him about mathematics, and about what it means to be a truly exceptional mentor and teacher.” — David Pollack | Former graduate student | Associate Professor of Mathematics at the Wesleyan University Department of Mathematics and Computer Science

“I was very sad to hear of Dick’s passing. Dick had a profound influence on me as a graduate student at Harvard, not only because of the amazing way he was able to communicate his deep understanding of mathematics—I never passed him in the corridor without learning something—but also because of his seemingly unbounded kindness and energy. He will be sorely missed.” — Jack Thorne | Former graduate student | Professor at the University of Cambridge Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics

“There are many great things to remember about Dick Gross. Here are three that stand out to me: First, he was a brilliant expositor and it was always a pleasure to hear his lectures, read his letters, and get lessons “in real time.” They were delivered with crystalline clarity, perfect organization, and a beautiful hand. Second, he had an incredible instinct for the telling example. An important thing I learned from him was that a well-chosen example and a few calculations informed by inspired guesses could lead directly to the essence of the matter at hand. Finally, and most significantly for his many students, Dick was an incredible ally, supporter, and inspiration. The best way to add energy and new ideas to a project was to have a quick chat with Dick. We will all miss him dearly.” — Douglas Ulmer | Former graduate student | Professor and Department Chair of the University of Arizona Department of Mathematics

“I owe everything to Dick, especially his warmth with students. No matter how un-productive I was, I always left his office feeling very energetic and positive. I hope to one day pass the same on to my own students. The last advice he gave me during graduation was “eat more” – so I did.” — Jerry Wang | Former graduate student | Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo Department of Pure Mathematics

“I arrived at Harvard in 2015 while Dick was chair. He was the perfect host, making me feel welcome, even though my area (set theory) was a bit removed from his. After he retired from Harvard and moved to San Diego, we shared a common contact (the president of Scripps), he being on the board, and I being a close friend of the president. They were planning to fly out to AZ in the president’s plane to visit me at a ranch in AZ, but the pandemic had other plans. My last plan was to have breakfast with Dick in La Jolla a year ago, but sadly that trip was also cancelled.” — Hugh Woodin | Professor of Mathematics and of Philosophy at the Harvard University Department of Mathematics and Department of Philosophy