Shing-Tung Yau

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This is a Chinese name; the family name is Yau.

Shing-Tung Yau at Harvard Law School dining hall

Shing-Tung Yau (Chinese: 丘成桐; pinyin: Qiū Chéngtóng; born April 4, 1949) is a prominent mathematician working in differential geometry, and involved in the theory of Calabi-Yau manifolds.

He was born in Shantou, Guangdong Province, China with an ancestry in Jiaoling (also in Guangdong) in a family of eight children. His father, a philosophy professor, died when he was 14. Yau moved to Hong Kong with his family where, after graduating from Pui Ching Middle School, he studied mathematics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong from 1966 to 1969. He undertook graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where his advisor was Shiing-Shen Chern. After receiving his Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1971, he spent a post-doctoral year at the Institute for Advanced Study. He then spent two years as an assistant professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

In 1974 he was appointed a professor at Stanford University. In 1976 he proved Calabi's conjecture^[1] on a class of manifolds now named Calabi-Yau manifolds. He returned to the Institute for Advanced Study as a professor in 1979. In that year, together with his former doctoral student Richard Schoen, he proved the positive energy theorem in general relativity. From 1984 to 1987 he was a professor at UC San Diego. In 1987 he moved to Harvard University, where he remains.

Yau has received a number of prominent awards. These include the Fields Medal in 1982 "for his contributions to partial differential equations, to the Calabi conjecture in algebraic geometry, to the positive mass conjecture of general relativity theory, and to real and complex Monge-Ampère equations", a MacArthur Fellowship in 1984, the Crafoord Prize in 1994, and the (U.S.) National Medal of Science in 1997.

His name is romanized according to its pronunciation in Cantonese Chinese.

Shing-Tung Yau was chief organizer of Strings 2006, an international physics conference on string theory, held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Among the lecturers was physicist Stephen Hawking, a long time friend of Yau^[2].

In August 2006, a New Yorker article on the Poincaré conjecture, "Manifold Destiny", discussed Yau's role in its proof.^[3] Yau claims this article is defamatory, and in September 2006 he established a public relations website, managed by the PR firm Spector and Associates, to dispute points in it and demand an apology. As of Oct 16, 2006, eight mathematics professors, including two quoted in the New Yorker article, have posted letters of support on Yau's website.^[4] The New Yorker reportedly stands by its article.^[5]

On Oct 17, 2006, a more sympathetic profile of Yau appeared, along with photographs from different stages of his life, in the New York Times.^[6] After recounting Yau's humble beginnings and rise to academic stardom, it devotes about half its length to the Perelman affair. The article acknowledges that Yau's egotism and high-profile activities, including criticism of Chinese academia, have alienated some of his colleagues and that Yau's promotion of the Cao-Zhu paper "annoyed many mathematicians, who felt that Dr. Yau had slighted Dr. Perelman." But it paints Yau as ultimately more concerned about the development of mathematics than about his reputation. In regards to the Perelman affair, the article focuses on Yau's position, which is that Perelman's proof was not understood by all and he "had a duty to dig out the truth of the proof."

Yau has recently been highly active in alleging widespread academic corruption in China, particularly concerning the mathematics field.^[7]

[edit] See also

Tian-Yau affair

[edit] References

^ Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 74 (May 1977) pp.1798-1799 <http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/74/5/1798>.
^ Celebrity scientist gets star treatment in China for cosmos theory <http://english.people.com.cn/200606/20/eng20060620_275392.html>.
^ Manifold Destiny: A legendary problem and the battle over who solved it <http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060828fa_fact2>.
^ Yau's website, with information on his legal action and letter to The New Yorker
^ "On his Web site, doctoryau.com, Dr. Yau has posted a 12-page letter showing what he and his lawyer say are errors in the article. The New Yorker has said it stands by its reporting." "Scientist at Work: Shing-Tung Yau, The Emperor of Math", By Dennis Overbye. October 17, 2006, The New York Times
^ Dennis Overbye. "Shing-tung Yau: The Emperor of Math", New York Times, 17 October 2006.
^ World famous mathematician slams academic corruption in China <http://english.people.com.cn/200508/18/eng20050818_203206.html>.