Michael Artin

Michael Artin

Michael Artin (photo by George Bergman)
Born 28 June 1934
Hamburg, Germany
Nationality American
Fields Mathematics
Institutions MIT
Alma mater Harvard University
Princeton University
Thesis On Enriques' Surfaces (1960)
Doctoral advisor Oscar Zariski
Doctoral students Eric Friedlander
David Harbater
Rick Miranda
Zinovy Reichstein
Amnon Yekutieli
Jian James Zhang
Notable awards Harvard Centennial Medal (2005)
Steele Prize (2002)
Wolf Prize (2013)

Michael Artin (German: [ˈaɐ̯tiːn]; born 28 June 1934) is an American mathematician and a professor emeritus in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology mathematics department, known for his significant contributions to algebraic geometry[1] and also generally recognized as one of the outstanding professors in his field.[2]

Life and career

Artin was born in Hamburg, Germany, and brought up in Indiana. His parents were Natalia Naumovna Jasny (Natascha) and Emil Artin, preeminent algebraist of the 20th century. Artin's parents had left Germany in 1937, because Michael Artin's maternal grandfather was Jewish.[3]

Artin did his undergraduate studies at Princeton University, receiving an A.B. in 1955; he then moved to Harvard University, where he received a Ph.D. in 1960 under the supervision of Oscar Zariski.[1][4]

In the early 1960s Artin spent time at the IHÉS in France, contributing to the SGA4 volumes of the Séminaire de géométrie algébrique, on topos theory and étale cohomology. His work on the problem of characterising the representable functors in the category of schemes has led to the Artin approximation theorem, in local algebra. This work also gave rise to the ideas of an algebraic space and algebraic stack, and has proved very influential in moduli theory. Additionally, he has made contributions to the deformation theory of algebraic varieties. He is currently working on noncommutative rings, especially geometric aspects.[5]

In 2002, Artin won the American Mathematical Society's annual Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement. In 2005, he was awarded the Harvard Centennial Medal. In 2013 he won the Wolf Prize in Mathematics. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1969),[6] the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics,[1] and the American Mathematical Society.[7]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Faculty profile, MIT mathematics department, retrieved 2011-01-03
  2. ↑ Date information sourced from Library of Congress Authorities data, via corresponding WorldCat Identities linked authority file (LAF) .
  3. ↑ O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Michael Artin", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews.
  4. ↑ Michael Artin at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  5. ↑ From the MacTutor biography: "His main research area changed from algebraic geometry to noncommutative ring theory".
  6. ↑ "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter A" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 25 April 2011.
  7. ↑ List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society, retrieved 2012-11-03.

External links

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