Gang Tian

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Gang Tian (Chinese: 田刚; pinyin: Tián Gāng; 1958 -) is a Chinese mathematician and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is known for his contributions to geometric analysis and quantum cohomology, among other fields. He was born in Nanjing, China, but now divides his time between Princeton University and Peking University.

1 Biography
2 Mathematical contributions
3 Controversy
4 External links
5 References

[edit] Biography

Tian graduated from Nanjing University in 1982, and received a master's degree from Peking University in 1984. In 1988, he received a PhD in mathematics from Harvard University, after having studied under Shing-Tung Yau. In 1998, he was appointed as a Cheung Kong Scholar professor at the School of Mathematical Sciences at Peking University, under the "Cheung Kong Scholars Programme" (长江计划) of the Ministry of Education. Later his appointment was changed to Cheung Kong Scholar chair professorship. He is a mathematics professor at Princeton University. He was awarded the Waterman Prize in 1994, and the Veblen prize in 1996.

[edit] Mathematical contributions

Much of Tians earlier work was about the existence of Kähler-Einstein metrics on complex manifolds. In particular he solved the existence question for Kähler-Einstein metrics on complex surfaces, and showed that hypersurfaces with a Kähler-Einstein metric are stable in the sense of geometric invariant theory.

He also (jointly with Y. Ruan) showed that the quantum cohomology ring of a symplectic manifold is associative.

In 2006, he, together with John Morgan of Columbia University, gave a detailed proof of the Poincaré Conjecture, and thus helped to verify the proof by Grigori Perelman.^[1]

[edit] Controversy

In 2005, the so-called "Tian-Yau affair" broke out. This was discussed in the New Yorker article Manifold destiny ^[2], The Emperor of Math ^[3] and Science magazine ^[4].