Shiing-Shen Chern
Shiing-Shen Chern (/tʃɜːrn/; Chinese: 陳省身, Mandarin: [tʂʰən.ɕiŋ.ʂən]; October 28, 1911 – December 3, 2004) was a Chinese American mathematician and poet. He made fundamental contributions to differential geometry and topology. He has been called the "father of modern differential geometry" and is widely regarded as a leader in geometry and one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century, winning numerous awards and recognition including the Wolf Prize and the inaugural Shaw Prize.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] In memory of Shiing-Shen Chern, the International Mathematical Union established the Chern Medal in 2010 to recognize "an individual whose accomplishments warrant the highest level of recognition for outstanding achievements in the field of mathematics."[8]
"Chern" redirects here. For other uses, see Chern (disambiguation).
Shiing-Shen Chern
陳省身
陳省身
December 3, 2004 (aged 93)
China and United States
2
- Chauvenet Prize (1970)
- National Medal of Science (1975)
- Wolf Prize (1983)
- Lobachevsky Medal (2002)
- Shaw Prize (2004)
- ForMemRS (1985) [1]
陳省身
陈省身
Chén Xǐngshēn
Chén Xǐngshēn
ㄔㄣˊ ㄒㄧㄥˇ ㄕㄣ
Chern Shiing-Shen
Ch'en Hsing-shen
Chern worked at the Institute for Advanced Study (1943–45), spent about a decade at the University of Chicago (1949-1960), and then moved to University of California, Berkeley, where he cofounded the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in 1982 and was the institute's founding director.[9][10] Renowned coauthors with Chern include Jim Simons, an American mathematician and billionaire hedge fund manager.[11] Chern's work, most notably the Chern-Gauss-Bonnet Theorem, Chern–Simons theory, and Chern classes, are still highly influential in current research in mathematics, including geometry, topology, and knot theory, as well as many branches of physics, including string theory, condensed matter physics, general relativity, and quantum field theory.[12]
Name spelling[edit]
Chern's surname (陳) is a common Chinese surname which is conventionally romanized as Chan or Chen. The spelling "Chern" is from Gwoyeu Romatzyh (GR) romanization’s tonal spelling. In English, Chern pronounced his own name as "Churn" (/tʃɜːrn/).
Biography[edit]
Early years in China[edit]
Chern was born in Xiushui, Jiaxing, China in 1911. He graduated from Xiushui Middle School (秀水中學) and subsequently moved to Tianjin in 1922 to accompany his father. In 1926, after spending four years in Tianjin, Chern graduated from Fulun High School.[13]
At age 15, Chern entered the Faculty of Sciences of the Nankai University in Tianjin and was interested in physics, but not so much the laboratory, so he studied mathematics instead.[5][14] Chern graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1930.[14] At Nankai, Chern's mentor was mathematician Jiang Lifu, and Chern was also heavily influenced by Chinese physicist Rao Yutai, considered to be one of the founding fathers of modern Chinese informatics.
Chern went to Beijing to work at the Tsinghua University Department of Mathematics as a teaching assistant. At the same time he also registered at Tsinghua Graduate School as a student. He studied projective differential geometry under Sun Guangyuan, a University of Chicago-trained geometer and logician who was also from Zhejiang. Sun is another mentor of Chern who is considered a founder of modern Chinese mathematics. In 1932, Chern published his first research article in the Tsinghua University Journal. In the summer of 1934, Chern graduated from Tsinghua with a master's degree, the first ever master's degree in mathematics issued in China.[13]
Yang Chen-Ning's father, Yang Ko-Chuen, another Chicago-trained professor at Tsinghua, but specializing in algebra, also taught Chern. At the same time, Chern was Chen-Ning Yang's teacher of undergraduate maths at Tsinghua. At Tsinghua, Hua Luogeng, also a mathematician, was Chern's colleague and roommate.
In 1932, Wilhelm Blaschke from the University of Hamburg visited Tsinghua and was impressed by Chern and his research.[15]
1934–1937 in Europe[edit]
In 1934, Chern received a scholarship to study in the United States at Princeton and Harvard, but at the time he wanted to study geometry and Europe was the center for the maths and sciences.[5]
He studied with the well-known Austrian geometer Wilhelm Blaschke.[14] Co-funded by Tsinghua and the Chinese Foundation of Culture and Education, Chern went to continue his study in mathematics in Germany with a scholarship.[14]
Chern studied at the University of Hamburg and worked under Blaschke's guidance first on the geometry of webs then on the Cartan-Kähler theory and invariant theory. He would often eat lunch and chat in German with fellow colleague Erich Kähler.[5]
He had a three-year scholarship but finished his degree very quickly in two years.[5] He obtained his Dr. rer.nat. (Doctor of Science, which is equivalent to PhD) degree in February, 1936.[14] He wrote his thesis in German, and it was titled Eine Invariantentheorie der Dreigewebe aus -dimensionalen Mannigfaltigkeiten im (English: An invariant theory of 3-webs of -dimensional manifolds in ).[16]
For his third year, Blaschke recommended Chern to study at the University of Paris.[5]
It was at this time that he had to choose between the career of algebra in Germany under Emil Artin and the career of geometry in France under Élie-Joseph Cartan. Chern was tempted by what he called the "organizational beauty" of Artin's algebra, but in the end, he decided to go to France in September 1936.[17]
He spent one year at the Sorbonne in Paris. There he met Cartan once a fortnight. Chern said:[5]
Chern received numerous honors and awards in his life, including:
Chern was given a number of honorary degrees, including from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (LL.D. 1969), University of Chicago (D.Sc. 1969), ETH Zurich (Dr.Math. 1982), Stony Brook University (D.Sc. 1985), TU Berlin (Dr.Math. 1986), his alma mater Hamburg (D.Sc. 1971) and Nankai (honorary doctorate, 1985), etc.
Chern was also granted numerous honorary professorships, including at Peking University (Beijing, 1978), his alma mater Nankai (Tianjin, 1978), Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Systems Science (Beijing, 1980), Jinan University (Guangzhou, 1980), Chinese Academy of Sciences Graduate School (1984), Nanjing University (Nanjing, 1985), East China Normal University (Shanghai, 1985), USTC (Hefei, 1985), Beijing Normal University (1985), Zhejiang University (Hangzhou, 1985), Hangzhou University (1986, the university was merged into Zhejiang University in 1998), Fudan University (Shanghai, 1986), Shanghai University of Technology (1986, the university was merged to establish Shanghai University in 1994), Tianjin University (1987), Tohoku University (Sendai, Japan, 1987), etc.