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Hi, I am a little mathematic student from Asia. I am sorry if my question is not appropriate here, but anyway, I hope you will help me to find the answer.

In my college, I studied mathematics and a little physics, now I am in the final year. I concentrated on algebra(Commmutative Algebra, Algebraic Geometry...) and number theory, but in my program, they did not have much algebra courses, nor number theory course.

I am now findng an advisor to help me writing my graduate thesis, I have already found some, but I did not email or talk to them.

I also knew a foreign teacher, who is working on number theory and Iwasawa theory, and I really respect him. He taught our class in 3 months, in our connection between two university, and we had chances to talk about mathematics everytimes.

So, the question is, how can I write a letter or email to some professor that asking them to become my advisor ? What should be include in this letter?

Infact, I was quite shy when I talk directly to them.

If I want to write a letter to the foreign teacher, who was mentioned above, How and what should be included in the email ?

Hoping I can here from you soon.

Thank for reading and answer !

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 There are no little mathematicians, only little theorems. – Cam McLeman Oct 14 2011 at 14:52
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 This forum isn't a great place for your question as the answer really depends on which university and program you want to apply to. Generally speaking I haven't found it productive for students to contact prospective advisors before their application process is complete but perhaps others have had different experiences. – Ryan Budney Oct 14 2011 at 15:02
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 Rereading your question carefully I am confused. Are there one, two, or more mathematicians involved? At first I thought there is one foreign mathematician with whom you would like to write a thesis. But now I am not sure anymore. – quid Oct 14 2011 at 16:27
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 @Steven: Sure! Just a play on the famous "No small actors..." quote. – Cam McLeman Oct 14 2011 at 16:47
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 Steven, you're right: the vertically challenged now enjoy equal opportunities and protections under the law. But this was only after decades of struggle, in the face of great opposition in mainstream society, as evidenced by this pop song from not so long ago: youtube.com/watch?v=1NvgLkuEtkA – Todd Trimble Oct 14 2011 at 19:38
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closed as off topic by Felipe Voloch, Ryan Budney, Igor Rivin, Andres Caicedo, Gjergji Zaimi Oct 14 2011 at 18:02

1 Answer

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To Quid: I am sorry if my question makes you confusing. I have not chose any professor yet, but I consider the case when I :

+Email to a foreign professor who taught me before and we got on very well

+Email to other professor in my own country.

I need the solution for both of the questions. How should this email be formatted? Do I give my name in the first line?

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1 
 Thank you for the clarification. The following is very general advice for the former; it is impossible to give good advice without knowing any details and to communicate this here won't work. The question I linked to gives general guidelines; you are not completely emailing out of the blue but the situation could be similar. I definitely recommend you mention the course early on. Having sometimes but rarely taught at foreign (relative to me) institutions or related situatiosn I can assure you that I could have major difficulties to link a name of a participant to the course (cont.) – quid Oct 14 2011 at 17:40
(cont.) in particular if you should not use an email address of your institution but gmail, hotmail or something like this. This does not mean I do not or did not care about the participants often I will remember situations or conversations but if one (or at least I) are faced with many names (and even more so if they might be from a language/culture I am not really familiar with it can be difficult to remeber). Yet, you mention three months so this is a long time, and perhaps this might not be a problem in your case, still it cannot hurt to briefly mention that course. (cont.) – quid Oct 14 2011 at 17:46
(cont) Now, Ryan expressed some scepticism whether you should email at all. And in view of your elaboration this stays relevant. But then you metion you interacted frequently over three months, so I would say emailing is fine. Yet, try to make sure that your email has a clear purpose specifci to that person. (This could well be more important than details of formailty or etiquette.) Provide some necessary context, but not too many details. I am not sure what I said is helpful, but I really cannot say much more. Good luck! – quid Oct 14 2011 at 18:07
Technical add on: if you register an acount, you could edit your question rather than giving an answer. – quid Oct 14 2011 at 18:08

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