André Haefliger

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André Haefliger
Born(1929-05-22)22 May 1929
Nyon, Switzerland
Died7 March 2023(2023-03-07) (aged 93)
NationalitySwiss
Alma materUniversity of Lausanne
University of Paris
Known forHaefliger structure
AwardsLeroy P. Steele Prize
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsUniversity of Geneva
ThesisStructures feuilletées et cohomologie à valeurs dans un faisceau de groupoides (1958)
Doctoral advisorCharles Ehresmann
Doctoral studentsAugustin Banyaga
Vaughan Jones
Websitehttps://www.unige.ch/math/folks/haefliger/

André Haefliger (Swiss Standard German pronunciation: [ˈandreː ˈhɛːflɪɡər]; 22 May 1929 – 7 March 2023) was a Swiss mathematician who worked primarily on topology.

Education and career

Haefliger went to school in

Ph.D. degree in 1958.[1] His thesis was entitled "Structures feuilletées et cohomologie à valeurs dans un faisceau de groupoïdes" and was written under the supervision of Charles Ehresmann.[2]

Haefliger got a

research fellowship for one year at the University of Paris, where he participated in the seminar of Henri Cartan, and then 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 until his retirement in 1996.[3]

In 1966 Haefliger was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Moscow.[4] In 1974–75, he was president of the Swiss Mathematical Society.[5]

Haefliger obtained a Doctorate

University of Dijon in 1997. In 2020 Haefliger and Martin Bridson were awarded the American Mathematical Society's Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition, for their book Metric Spaces of Non-Positive Curvature (Springer Verlag, 1999).[6]

Haefliger died on 7 March 2023, at the age of 93.[7]

Research

Haefliger's main research interests were differential topology and geometry.

Haefliger found the topological obstruction to the existence of a spin structure on an orientable Riemannian manifold.[8] In two papers in the Annals he studied various embedding of spheres in relations to knot theory.[9][10] He has also made important contributions in the theory of foliations, introducing the notion of Haefliger structures.[11]

Zürich
in 2007

He wrote more than 80 papers in peer review journals[12] and had 20 Ph.D. students, including Augustin Banyaga and the future Field Medalist Vaughan Jones.[2]

Selected works

References

  1. ^ Max-Albert Knus, 'André Haefliger', Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, retrieved 22 March 2023.
  2. ^ a b André Haefliger at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  3. ^ "Celebratio Mathematica — Haefliger — Jackson". celebratio.org. Retrieved 19 December 2021.
  4. ^ "ICM Plenary and Invited Speakers | International Mathematical Union (IMU)". www.mathunion.org. Retrieved 19 December 2021.
  5. ^ "Organisation » Past Presidents | The Swiss Mathematical Society". www.math.ch. Retrieved 18 December 2021.
  6. ^ "News from the AMS". American Mathematical Society. Retrieved 18 December 2021.
  7. ^ "In memoriam André Haefliger". Université de Genève. 9 March 2023. Retrieved 12 March 2023.
  8. ^ A. Haefliger (1956). "Sur l'extension du groupe structural d'un espace fibré". C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris. 243: 558–560.
  9. JSTOR 1970208
    .
  10. JSTOR 1970475
    .
  11. doi:10.1016/0040-9383(70)90040-6
    .
  12. ^ "zbMATH Open - the first resource for mathematics". zbmath.org. Retrieved 19 December 2021.
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