Isadore Singer

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Not to be confused with Isidore Singer.

Isadore Singer
Singer in 1977
BornMay 3, 1924
Detroit, Michigan, US
DiedFebruary 11, 2021(2021-02-11) (aged 96)
Boxborough, Massachusetts, US
Alma mater
Known for
Spouse
Rosemary Singer
​
(m. 1956)​
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
Institutions
ThesisLie Algebras of Unbounded Operators (1950)
Doctoral advisorIrving Segal
Doctoral students

Isadore Manuel Singer (May 3, 1924 – February 11, 2021) was an American mathematician. He was an Emeritus

Department of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley.[1][2][3]

Singer is noted for his work with

Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) with Shiing-Shen Chern and Calvin Moore.[5][6]

Biography

Early life and education

Singer was born on May 3, 1924, in Detroit, Michigan, to Polish Jewish immigrants. His father Simon was employed as a printer and only spoke Yiddish, and his mother, Freda (Rosemaity), worked as a seamstress. Singer learned English swiftly and subsequently taught it to the rest of his family.[7][8] Isadore was born with a prominent hemangioma birthmark under his right eye.[citation needed]

Singer studied physics at the University of Michigan, graduating in 1944 after just two-and-a-half years so that he could join the military.[7][9] He was stationed in the US Army in the Philippines, where he was a radar officer. During the daytime, he operated a communications school for the Philippine Army. He undertook correspondence courses in mathematics at night in order to satisfy the prerequisites for relativity and quantum mechanics.[7] Upon his return from military service, Singer studied mathematics for one year at the University of Chicago.[7] Although he initially intended to go back to physics, his interest in math was piqued, and he continued with the subject,[7] earning an M.S. in Mathematics in 1948 and a Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1950 under the supervision of Irving Segal.[2][3][1]

Career

Singer held a postdoctoral fellowship as a CLE Moore instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1950.[1] After appointments at the University of California, Los Angeles, Columbia University, and Princeton University, he returned to MIT as a professor in 1956 and was appointed as the Norbert Wiener Professor from 1970 to 1979.[1] In 1979, he moved to the University of California, Berkeley as Miller Professor.[1] He returned to MIT in 1983 as the first John D. MacArthur Professor, before being appointed as an Institute Professor in 1987.[1]

Singer was chair of the Committee of Science & Public Policy of the

Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, based in Berkeley, California.[7]

Singer died on February 11, 2021, at his home in Boxborough, Massachusetts. He was 96.[7]

Research

Partnering with British-Lebanese mathematician

index theory.[7] The development of their work made use of the Dirac operator, the general geometric construction of which was a notable new discovery. It is sometimes called the Atiyah–Singer operator in their honor.[10] In discussions between mathematician Jim Simons and physicist Yang Chen-Ning in the 1970s, it was found that the Atiyah–Singer theorem has a number of applications to physics.[4][7]

With

Richard V. Kadison, he proposed the Kadison–Singer problem in 1959,[11] Inspired by quantum mechanics, it turned out to have reformulations in engineering and computer science. It was finally proved in 2013.[7]

Singer also developed

Ambrose–Singer holonomy theorem and the McKean–Singer theorem.[12]

Awards and honors

Singer was a member of the

National Academy of Sciences,[13] the American Philosophical Society,[14] and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[15] He was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.[16] In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.[17]

Among the awards he has received are the

Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2000) from the American Mathematical Society, the Abel Prize (2004) shared with Michael Atiyah,[18] the 2004 Gauss Lecture and the James Rhyne Killian Faculty Achievement Award from MIT (2005).[19]

Personal life

Singer's first marriage was to Sheila Ruff, a play therapist for disabled children; they later divorced. His second marriage was to Rosemarie Singer, and they remained married until his death. He had five children: Stephen (born visually impaired), Eliot, and Natasha (with Sheila); Emily, and Annabelle (with Rosemarie).[7] Singer's brother Sidney was a particle physicist with Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and predeceased him in 2016.[7]

Works

  • Kadison, Richard V.; Singer, I. M. (1952). "Some Remarks on Representations of Connected Groups". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 38 (5): 419–423.
    PMID 16589115
    .
  • Singer, I. M. (1952). "Uniformly Continuous Representations of Lie Groups". Annals of Mathematics. 56 (2): 242–247.
    JSTOR 1969797
    .
  • Ambrose, W.; Singer, I. M. (1953). "A Theorem on Holonomy". Transactions of the American Mathematical Society. 75 (3): 428–443.
    JSTOR 1990721
    .
  • Arens, Richard; Singer, I. M. (1954). "Function Values as Boundary Integrals". Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society. 5 (5): 735–745.
    JSTOR 2031858
    .
  • Atiyah, M. F.; Singer, I. M. (1968). "The Index of Elliptic Operators: I". Annals of Mathematics. 87 (3): 484–530.
    JSTOR 1970715
    .
  • Atiyah, M. F.; Singer, I. M. (1968). "The Index of Elliptic Operators: III". Annals of Mathematics. 87 (3): 546–604.
    JSTOR 1970717
    .
  • Atiyah, M. F.; Singer, I. M. (1971). "The Index of Elliptic Operators: IV". Annals of Mathematics. 93 (1): 119–138.
    JSTOR 1970756
    .
  • Ray, D. B.; Singer, I. M. (1973). "Analytic Torsion for Complex Manifolds". Annals of Mathematics. 98 (1): 154–177.
    JSTOR 1970909
    .

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g "Isadore Singer". math.mit.edu. Department of Mathematics, MIT. Retrieved February 15, 2021.
  2. ^ a b "Isadore M. Singer | Department of Mathematics at University of California Berkeley". math.berkeley.edu. Retrieved April 20, 2018.
  3. ^ a b "Singer biography". www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk. Retrieved April 20, 2018.
  4. ^ a b Devlin, Keith (April 2004). "Abel Prize Awarded: The Mathematicians' Nobel". Devlin's Angle. Mathematical Association of America.
  5. ^ MSRI. "Mathematical Sciences Research Institute". www.msri.org. Retrieved April 20, 2018.
  6. ^ "Shiing-Shen Chern". Institute for Advanced Study. Retrieved April 20, 2018.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Rehmeyer, Julie (February 12, 2021). "Isadore Singer, Who Bridged a Gulf From Math to Physics, Dies at 96". The New York Times. Retrieved February 12, 2021.
  8. ISBN 9783642013737
    .
  9. mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk
    .
  10. ^ Lawson and Michelsohn. Spin geometry.
  11. ^ Klarreich, Erica (November 24, 2015). "'Outsiders' Crack 50-Year-Old Math Problem". Quanta Magazine. Retrieved February 11, 2021.
  12. ^ Rehmeyer, Julie (February 12, 2021). "Isadore Singer, Who Bridged a Gulf From Math to Physics, Dies at 96". The New York Times. Retrieved February 12, 2021.
  13. ^ "I. M. Singer". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved May 16, 2022.
  14. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved May 16, 2022.
  15. ^ "Isadore Manuel Singer". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved May 16, 2022.
  16. ^ "Gruppe 1: Matematiske fag" (in Norwegian). Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Archived from the original on November 10, 2013. Retrieved October 7, 2010.
  17. ^ List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society, retrieved July 20, 2013.
  18. ^ "2004: Sir Michael Francis Atiyah and Isadore M. Singer". www.abelprize.no. Retrieved August 22, 2022.
  19. ^ Brown, Sasha (May 23, 2005). "Isadore Singer wins faculty Killian Award". MIT News. Retrieved January 15, 2024.
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