Shiing-Shen Chern

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Shiing-Shen Chern
Shiing-Shen Chern
Shiing-Shen Chern
Born October 26, 1911
Jiaxing, Zhejiang,China
Died December 3, 2004
Tianjin,China
Field Mathematics
Institution Tsinghua University
Institute for Advanced Study
University of Chicago
University of California, Berkeley
Nankai University
Alma mater Nankai University
Tsinghua University
University of Hamburg
Academic advisor Wilhelm Blaschke
Notable students Shing-Tung Yau,Fields Medal1982
Known for Chern-Simons theory
Chern-Weil theory
Chern class
Notable prizes National Medal of Science (1975)
Wolf Prize (1984)

Shiing-Shen Chern (October 26, 1911December 3, 2004) was a Chinese American mathematician, one of the leading differential geometers of the twentieth century.

His last name is pronounced "Chen", a common Chinese surname; the spelling "Chern" is the transliteration in the Gwoyeu Romatzyh romanization, with the silent "r" indicating a second-tone syllable in Mandarin Chinese, which is a tonal language. In the same romanization, the spelling of his given name "Shiing-Shen" indicates a third tone for Shiing and a first tone for Shen.

Shiing-Shen Chern
Simplified:
Traditional: 陳省身
Hanyu Pinyin: Chén Xǐngshēn
Gwoyeu Romatzyh: Chern Shiing-Shen

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[edit] Early life

Chern was born in Jiaxing in Zhejiang province. He moved to Tianjin in 1922 to be with his father, and starting in 1926 he studied there at Nankai University, graduating in mathematics in 1930. He was a graduate student under Dan Sun at Tsinghua University from 1931 to 1934, working on projective differential geometry.

[edit] European studies

In 1932 Wilhelm Blaschke from the University of Hamburg visited Tsinghua and was impressed with Chern. In 1934 Chern went on a scholarship to Hamburg, working on the Cartan-Kähler theory, and finishing his doctoral degree in 1936. In 1936–1937 he studied with Élie Cartan in Paris, returning to Beijing, China to a professorial position in Tsinghua (which had relocated to Kunming after the Japanese attacks).

[edit] In America and after

In 1943 Chern went to the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at Princeton, working there on characteristic classes in differential geometry. Shortly afterwards, he was invited by Solomon Lefschetz to be an editor of Annals of Mathematics.

He returned to Shanghai in 1946 to found the Mathematical Institute of Academia Sinica, which was later moved to Nanking. From 1948 he was again at the IAS, becoming a professor at the University of Chicago in 1949.

He moved to the University of California, Berkeley in 1960. The next year he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. At Berkeley, he founded the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) in 1981 and acted as the director until 1984. In 1985 he founded the Nankai Insititute of Mathematics in Tianjin, where he died in 2004 at the age of 93.

[edit] Research

Chern's work spreads over all the classic fields of differential geometry. It includes areas currently fashionable (the Chern-Simons theory arising from a 1974 paper written jointly with Jim Simons), perennial (the Chern-Weil theory linking curvature invariants to characteristic classes from 1944, after the Allendoerfer-Weil paper of 1943 on the Gauss-Bonnet theorem), the quotidian (Chern classes), and some areas such as projective differential geometry and webs that have a lower profile. He published results in integral geometry, value distribution theory of holomorphic functions, and minimal submanifolds.

He was a true follower of Élie Cartan, working intensely on the 'theory of equivalence' in his time in China from 1937 to 1943, in relative isolation. In 1954 he published his own treatment of the pseudogroup problem that is in effect the touchstone of Cartan's geometric theory. He used the moving frame method with success only matched by its inventor; he preferred in complex manifold theory to stay with the geometry, rather than follow the potential theory. Indeed, one of his books is entitled, "Complex Manifolds without Potential Theory"! In the last years of his life, he advocated the study of Finsler geometry, writing several books and articles on the subject.

[edit] Awards and recognition

He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1975; the Wolf Prize in mathematics in 1984; and the Shaw Prize in mathematical sciences in May, 2004. The asteroid 29552 Chern is named after him.

[edit] Family

His wife, Shih-ning (Cheng) Chern, whom he married in Kunming in 1939, died in 2000. They had a daughter, May Chu (wife of the physicist Paul Chu) and a son, Paul.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links