Yitang Zhang (Chinese: 张益唐; born February 5, 1955)[3] is a Chinese-American mathematician primarily working on number theory and a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Santa Barbara since 2015.

[4] Previously working at the University of New Hampshire as a lecturer, Zhang submitted a paper to the Annals of Mathematics in 2013 which established the first finite bound on the least gap between consecutive primes that is attained infinitely often.

[9] After the Cultural Revolution ended, Zhang entered Peking University in 1978 as an undergraduate student and received a Bachelor of Science in mathematics in 1982.

He became a graduate student of Professor Pan Chengbiao, a number theorist at Peking University, and obtained a Master of Science in mathematics in 1984.

Zhang arrived at Purdue in January 1985, studied there for six and a half years, and obtained his PhD in mathematics in December 1991.

Moh wrote that Zhang "failed miserably" in proving the Jacobian conjecture, "never published any paper on algebraic geometry" after leaving Purdue, and "wasted seven years of his own life and my time".

[14] After some years, Zhang managed to find a position as a lecturer at the University of New Hampshire, where he was hired by Kenneth Appel in 1999.

[2] A profile published in the Quanta Magazine reports that Zhang used to live in his car during the initial job-hunting days.

[16] Zhang stayed for a semester at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, in 2014, and he joined the University of California, Santa Barbara in fall 2015.