About

Brendan Hassett is the Jonathan Nelson University Professor of Mathematics and Director of the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics at Brown University. He received his BA in 1992 from Yale and his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1996 under the supervision of Joseph Harris. From 1996 to 2000, he worked as a Dickson Instructor at the University of Chicago, partly supported by a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. He was a faculty member at Rice University from 2000 to 2015 and chaired its mathematics department from 2009 to 2014. He has held visiting positions at the Mittag Leffler Institute in Stockholm, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the University of Paris (Orsay). Hassett's research focus is algebraic geometry. His work has been recognized with a Sloan Research Fellowship, a National Science Foundation CAREER award, and the Charles W. Duncan Award for Outstanding Faculty at Rice. He is a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Mathematics
• Pure mathematics
• Epistemology
• Geometry
• Philosophy
• Physics
• Mathematical economics

Selected publications

• Equivariant Geometry of Low-dimensional Quadrics

  Taiwanese Journal of Mathematics · 2025-06-29

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We provide new stable linearizability constructions for regular actions of finite groups on homogeneous spaces and low-dimensional quadrics.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Degree two unirational parametrizations over the real field

  ArXiv.org · 2025-09-10

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We study degree two unirational parameterizations of geometrically rational surfaces over the real field.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Rationality of forms of M¯0,n$\overline{{\mathcal {M}}}_{0,n}$

  Journal of the London Mathematical Society · 2025-02-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract We study equivariant geometry and rationality of moduli spaces of points on the projective line, for twists associated with permutations of the points.

  PublisherDOI

• Involutions on K3 surfaces and derived equivalence

  Mathematische Zeitschrift · 2025-11-10

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Rationality of forms of $\overline{\mathcal M}_{0,n}$

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2024-02-05

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We study equivariant geometry and rationality of moduli spaces of points on the projective line, for twists associated with permutations of the points.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Cubic fourfolds of discriminant 24 and rationality

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2024-11-06

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Cubic fourfolds of discriminant 24 contain special codimension-two algebraic cycles of degree 6 and self-intersection 20. Such cycles may be represented by singular scrolls or del Pezzo surfaces. A discriminant 24 cubic fourfold gives rise to a twisted surface, consisting of a degree-six K3 surface and a two-torsion element of its Brauer group. We show that the cubic fourfold is rational if the Brauer class vanishes. This yields a countably-infinite collection of new examples of rational cubic fourfolds, each of codimension two in moduli.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Equivariant geometry of low-dimensional quadrics

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2024-10-31

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We provide new stable linearizability constructions for regular actions of finite groups on homogeneous spaces and low-dimensional quadrics.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Equivariant derived equivalence and rational points on K3 surfaces

  Communications in Number Theory and Physics · 2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Stable rationality in smooth families of threefolds

  Duke Mathematical Journal · 2023-04-05 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We exhibit families of smooth projective threefolds with both stably rational and non stably rational fibers.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Involutions on K3 surfaces and derived equivalence

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2023-03-06

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We study involutions on K3 surfaces under conjugation by derived equivalence and more general relations, together with applications to equivariant birational geometry.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• FRG: Collaborative Research: Arithmetic and geometry of rational curves on K3 surfaces

  NSF · $250k · 2010–2014

• Collaborative Research: FRG: Geometry of moduli spaces of rational curves with applications to Diophantine problems over function fields

  NSF · $215k · 2006–2010

• Descent, rational points, and the geometry of moduli spaces

  NSF · $247k · 2015–2018

• CAREER: Algebraic Geometry of Moduli Spaces

  NSF · $325k · 2002–2008

• Descent, rational points, and the geometry of moduli spaces

  NSF · $228k · 2014–2015

Frequent coauthors

• Yuri Tschinkel

  New York University

  235 shared

• Anthony Várilly‐Alvarado

  57 shared

• Andrew Kresch

  51 shared

• Nicolas Addington

  49 shared

• Arend Bayer

  University of Edinburgh

  17 shared

• Alena Pirutka

  14 shared

• Yuri Tschinkel

  Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences

  11 shared

• Fedor Bogomolov

  7 shared

Labs

• Simons Collaboration on Arithmetic Geometry, Number Theory, and ComputationPI

  Focus on arithmetic geometry, number theory, and computation