David William Masser (born 11 August 1948) is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Basel, in Basel, Switzerland. He obtained his Ph.D. from University of Cambridge in 1974 on the topic of Elliptic Functions and Transcendence.
Before his appointment at the Mathematics Institute in Basel, Masser taught at the University of Michigan. He is known for his work in number theory, and was elected to the Royal Society in 2005.
Along with Joseph Oesterlé, Masser formulated the abc conjecture in 1985. It has been stated that this conjecture "is the most important unsolved problem in Diophantine analysis". An example of diophantine analysis would be the attempt to solve Fermat's last theorem.
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“Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)