Alan Baker obituary

In 1966 the start of a new era in number theory was marked by Alan Baker, who has died aged 78, joining the department of pure mathematics at Cambridge University. With a cascade of papers, he had published solutions to a series of problems from a line of inquiry that went back to the third-century mathematician Diophantus of Alexandria. On the basis of this exceptional work, in 1970 Alan was awarded the Fields medal, one of the discipline’s highest distinctions.