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.

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[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. In 2004 Professor Tian was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

[edit] Mathematical contributions

Much of Tian's 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 compact complex surfaces with positive first Chern class, and showed that hypersurfaces with a Kähler-Einstein metric are stable in the sense of geometric invariant theory. He proved that a Kähler manifold with trivial canonical bundle has trivial obstruction space, known as Bogomolov-Tian-Todorov Theorem.

He (jointly with Jun Li) constructed the moduli spaces of maps from curves in both algebraic geometry and symplectic geometry and studied the obstruction theory on these moduli spaces. 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 Conflict" broke out. This was discussed in the New Yorker article "Manifold Destiny" [2], The New York Times[3] and Science magazine [4].

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ Morgan, John W.; Gang Tian (25 July 2006). "Ricci Flow and the Poincaré Conjecture". arXiv:math.DG/0607607. 
  2. ^ Sylvia Nasar and David Gruber, "Manifold Destiny: A legendary problem and the battle over who solved it.", The New Yorker, 21 August 2006
  3. ^ Dennis Overbye, "The Emperor of Math.", The New York Times, October 17, 2006.
  4. ^ Science Magazine, "Frustrations Mount Over China's High-Priced Hunt for Trophy Professors.".
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