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][3] Brownawell was born in Grundy County, Missouri;[1] his father was a farmer and train inspector.
[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] Brownawell and Michel Waldschmidt shared the 1986 Hardy–Ramanujan Prize for their independent proofs that at least one of the two numbers