Friedrich Hirzebruch

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Friedrich Hirzebruch
Hamm, Province of Westphalia, Germany
Died27 May 2012(2012-05-27) (aged 84)
Bonn
, Germany
Alma mater
Known for
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
Institutions
Doctoral advisor
Doctoral students

Friedrich Ernst Peter Hirzebruch ForMemRS[1] (17 October 1927 – 27 May 2012) was a German mathematician, working in the fields of topology, complex manifolds and algebraic geometry, and a leading figure in his generation. He has been described as "the most important mathematician in Germany of the postwar period."[3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]

Education

Hirzebruch was born in

Hamm, Westphalia in 1927.[12]
His father of the same name was a maths teacher. Hirzebruch studied at the
ETH Zürich
.

Career

Hirzebruch then held a position at

Max-Planck-Institut für Mathematik
in 1981. More than 300 people gathered in celebration of his 80th birthday in Bonn in 2007.[citation needed]

The

complex manifolds was a major advance and quickly became part of the mainstream developments around the classical Riemann–Roch theorem
; it was also a precursor of the
Grothendieck's powerful generalisation
. Hirzebruch's book Neue topologische Methoden in der algebraischen Geometrie (1956) was a basic text for the 'new methods' of
complex algebraic geometry
. He went on to write the foundational papers on
Hilbert modular surfaces, with Don Zagier. He even found connections between the Dedekind sum in number theory and differential topology, one of the many discoveries found between these different fields. His work influenced a generation of prominent mathematicians like Kunihiko Kodaira, John Milnor, Borel, Atiyah, Raoul Bott and Jean-Pierre Serre.[citation needed
]

In March 1945, Hirzebruch became a soldier, and in April, in the last weeks of Hitler's rule, he was taken prisoner by the British forces then invading Germany from the west. When a British soldier found that he was studying mathematics, he drove him home and released him, and told him to continue studying.[13]

Hirzebruch is famous for organizing the

Bonn University, beginning from 1957, and the first speakers include Atiyah, Jacques Tits, Alexander Grothendieck, Hans Grauert, Nicolaas Kuiper, and Hirzebruch himself. It allowed international cooperation among the mathematical world for the last 60 years and was a major source of developments in topology, geometry, group theory, number theory as well as mathematical physics in a few decades' time. He also established the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics at Bonn in 1980. The institute became the place for the Arbeitstagung and Hirzebruch was its director until 1995. The second Arbeitstagung began in 1993 and continues to this day.[citation needed
]

From 1970 to 1971 he was the

Donegall Lecturer in Mathematics at Trinity College Dublin.[citation needed
]

According to the Mathematics Genealogy Project, Hirzebruch has supervised the doctoral studies of 52 mathematicians. Some of them include Egbert Brieskorn, Matthias Kreck, Don Zagier, Detlef Gromoll, Klaus Jänich, Lothar Göttsche, Dietmar Arlt, Winfried Scharlau, Walter Neumann, Wolfgang Meyer, Kang Zuo, Hans Scheerer, Erich Ossa, Klaus Lamotke, Eduardo Mendoza, Dimitrios Dais and Friedhelm Waldhausen.[citation needed]

Hirzebruch died at the age of 84 on 27 May 2012.[14][15][16]

Honours and awards

Amongst many other honours, Hirzebruch was awarded the

Lobachevsky Medal in 1989.[17]

The government of Japan awarded him the Order of the Sacred Treasure in 1996 and the Seki-Takakazu prize of the Mathematical Society of Japan (MSJ) in 1997.[18]

Hirzebruch won an

Einstein Medal of the Albert Einstein society in Bern in 1999, and received the Cantor medal
in 2004.

Hirzebruch was a foreign member of numerous academies and societies, including the

United States National Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society[1] and the French Academy of Sciences
. In 1980–81 he delivered the first Sackler Distinguished Lecture in Israel. He was also a member of academies of Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Israel, Finland, Hungary, Netherlands, Göttingen, Austria, Ireland as well as the Academia Europaea and the European Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Hirzebruch was the president of the German Mathematical Society in 1962 and 1990, first after the foundation of a separate Eastern German mathematical due to the German division, and then again after the collapse of the wall which led to the unification of the East and West German Mathematical societies. He was also the first President of the European Mathematical Society from 1990 to 1994. In this way, he rebuilt the mathematical life in both Germany and Europe after the war.

References

  1. ^
    doi:10.1098/rsbm.2014.0010
    .
  2. ^ Friedrich Hirzebruch at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  3. ^ "Friedrich Hirzebruch 1927–2012". 29 May 2012. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
  4. ISBN 978-1-85743-217-6
    . Retrieved 24 April 2010.
  5. MR 0229251
  6. MR 0650832
  7. MR 0931775
  8. MR 1189136
  9. MR 1335917
  10. ^ Segel, Joel (1 December 2011). "Friedrich Hirzebruch: Giant of German Mathematics". Simons Foundation.[permanent dead link]
  11. doi:10.1090/noti1145
  12. ^ O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Friedrich Hirzebruch", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
  13. ^ "View Quotes". 4 March 2016. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
  14. ^ "With great sadness we mourn the death of our founder, Friedrich Hirzebruch, who passed away on Sunday, May 27". Max Planck Institute for Mathematics.
  15. ^ Max Planck Institute Announcement, Max Planck Institute for Mathematics. Retrieved on 29 May 2012.
  16. ^ Schechter, Bruce (10 June 2012). "Friedrich Hirzebruch, Mathematician, Dies". The New York Times. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
  17. ^ Schecter, Bruce (10 June 2012), "Friedrich Hirzebruch, Mathematician, Is Dead at 84", The New York Times
  18. ^ L'Harmattan web site (in French), Order with gold and silver rays

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Friedrich_Hirzebruch&oldid=1213935452"