Eric Rains was 14 when he began classes at
Case Western Reserve University in 1987. He graduated with bachelor's degrees in computer science and physics and a master's degree in mathematics at age 17. By means of a
Churchill Scholarship he studied mathematics and physics at the
University of Cambridge for the academic year 1991–1992, receiving a Certificate of Advanced Study in Mathematics. He received his PhD in 1995 from
Harvard University with thesis
Topics in Probability on Compact Lie Groups under the supervision of
Persi Diaconis. From 1995 to 1996, Rains worked at the
IDA's
Center for Communications Research (CCR) in Princeton. From 1996 to 2002 he was a researcher for
AT&T Labs. From 2002 to 2003 he returned to the CCR in Princeton. In 2003, Rains became a full professor at the
University of California, Davis. From 2007 to 2023, Rains was a full professor at
Caltech and served as the Executive Officer of the Caltech Mathematics Department from 2019 to 2022. As of Fall 2023, Rains is a professor emeritus at
Caltech, per their website. In the fall of 2006 he was a visiting professor at the
University of Melbourne. In 2007, Rains was a plenary speaker at the Western Sectional meeting of the
American Mathematical Society (AMS). He was elected a Fellow of the AMS in the class of 2018 for "contributions to coding theory, the theory of random matrices, the study of special functions, non-commutative geometry and number theory". ==Selected publications==