440A Rowland Hall
University of California Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697
(949) 824-5424
mdforema@uci.edu
MBA, Harvard University, 2013
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1980
M.A. University of California, Berkeley, 1979
B.A., University of Colorado, 1975 (Mathematics and Philosophy, Summa Cum Laude, Named the Outstanding Undergraduate in the College of Arts and Sciences, 1975)
Professor Foreman was a mathematical prodigy, receiving his Bachelor’s degree at the age of 18. He proceeded to UC Berkeley where he got his Ph.D. in Set Theory. His early work was on the Foundations of Mathematics, which functions as the “operating system” for mathematical activity. In 1988, he published a joint paper that ultimately led to the unification of competing axiom systems for mathematics.
Dr. Foreman then began work in Measure Theory and Dynamical Systems. In 1994, he answered a 60-year-old problem about the Banach-Tarski paradox by showing that there is a paradoxical decomposition of the sphere using pieces with the property of Baire. His work in ergodic theory led to anti-classification results, ultimately disproving a conjecture of Von Neumann dating to 1932 about the classification of measure preserving diffeomorphisms of the sphere.
In 2011, Foreman took a 2-year leave to go back to school and got an MBA from Harvard in the full-time MBA program. Since 2013, in addition to his regular research, he has done part-time work for several hedge funds as well as research in financial mathematics. He is currently interested in the statistical aspects of high frequency trading. His duties at UCI include running the undergraduate math major emphasis on Financial Mathematics.
Foreman’s hobbies include sailing. He sailed his C&C 44 over 25,000 miles, across the Atlantic, to the Arctic and around the Mediterranean, followed by a circumnavigation of Newfoundland. He has also sailed around Cape Horn.