Richard Ewen Borcherds (/ˈbɔːrtʃərdz/; born 29 November 1959)[2] is a British[4] mathematician currently working in quantum field theory.

Borcherds was born in Cape Town, South Africa, but the family moved to Birmingham in the United Kingdom when he was six months old.

[7] Borcherds was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and Trinity College, Cambridge,[8] where he studied under John Horton Conway.

[11][12] Baron-Cohen insinuated that while Borcherds may have had autistic traits, he did not meet a formal diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome.

[13] In 1998 at the 23rd International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin, Germany he received the Fields Medal together with Maxim Kontsevich, William Timothy Gowers and Curtis T.