André Haefliger

"Haefliger" redirects here. For other uses, see Haefliger (disambiguation).
André Haefliger
Born 22 May 1929
Nyon, Switzerland
Nationality Swiss
Fields Mathematics
Institutions University of Geneva
Alma mater University of Strasbourg
Doctoral advisor Charles Ehresmann
Doctoral students Augustin Banyaga
Nathan Habegger
Vaughan Jones
Thierry Vust
Claude Weber

André Haefliger (born 22 May 1929) is a Swiss mathematician who works primarily on topology.

He studied mathematics in Lausanne. He received his PhD in 1958 from the University of Strasbourg under the supervision of Charles Ehresmann with "Structures feuilletées et cohomologie à valeurs dans un faisceau de groupoïdes".

From 1959 to 1961 he worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

Since 1962 he has been a full professor at the University of Geneva.

Haefliger made important contributions to topology, for example, in knot theory and the theory of foliations, where he introduced Haefliger structures. In 1956, he also found the topological obstruction to the existence of a spin structure on an orientable Riemannian manifold.[1]

In 1974-75, he was President of the Swiss Mathematical Society.

He is an honorary doctor of ETH Zurich (1992).

His students include Vaughan Jones.

Works

References

  1. A. Haefliger (1956). "Sur l’extension du groupe structural d’un espace fibré". C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris 243: 558–560.

External links