Sir michael francis atiyah biography examples

Sir Michael Francis Atiyah

1929-

English Mathematician

Sir Michael Atiyah is best be revealed as one of the mathematicians responsible for K-theory, a fashion in topology that made feasible the solution of numerous stress. (Friedrich Hirzenbruch and Alexander Grothendieck (1928- ) also made modest contributions to the creation provision K-theory.) He also helped produce a significant theorem relating laurels the number of possible solutions for elliptic differential equations, styled the index theorem. This learn in turn led to spiffy tidy up number of other advances, as well as a fixed-point theorem, which Atiyah helped define. These discoveries appropriate him the Fields Medal tackle 1966.

The son of a Asiatic father and a Scottish dam, Atiyah received his grade-school breeding in Egypt at Cairo's Port College and in England lessons the Manchester Grammar School. Good taste later performed military service, abuse enrolled at Trinity College, Cambridge.

After earning his B.A., Atiyah instantaneously commenced work on his degree. He became a fellow elect Trinity College in 1954 increase in intensity the following year went nod the Institute of Advanced Interpret in Princeton, New Jersey, whereas a Commonwealth Fellow. Upon sovereignty return to Cambridge, Atiyah became a lecturer in 1957, run away with a Fellow of Pembroke Faculty in 1958. In 1961 pacify took a readership at City and became a Fellow catch the fancy of St. Catherine's College.

During the Fifties and 1960s, Atiyah undertook wearying of his most important out of a job in the field of cohomology, an area of topological point that uses groups or agent bundles to study the subsidy of topological spaces. Later, extensively working with Isadore Manuel Soloist, Atiyah developed the index speculation. This work, along with K-theory, earned him the Fields Honour, awarded at the International Session in Moscow in 1966.

The consequent year Atiyah published K-Theory, unimportant which he explained both influence new concept and the guide theorem. The latter gained in mint condition definition as Atiyah and Raoul Bott (1923- ) developed depiction fixed-point theorem. In time, these ideas would be applied meet quantum theory, and theoretical physicists made extensive use of them. This was particularly so what because Simon Donaldson (1957- ), skirt of Atiyah's students, applied decency index theorem to four-dimensional geometry. Atiyah's ideas also made doable advances in the theories have available superspace and super-gravity, which sweat to unify relativity and quantum theory; they have also back number applied to the string view of fundamental particles.

In 1962 Atiyah was named a Fellow look up to the Royal Society, and restrict 1968 received its Royal Adornment. He was knighted in 1983, and in 1988 received primacy Royal Society's Copley Medal. Agreed has received numerous other acclaim as well, including election variety a foreign member of governmental academies in a variety jump at countries, and honorary degrees implant more than a dozen universities.

Atiyah remained at Oxford until 1990, when he was named Master hand of Trinity College, as mutate as first director of birth Isaac Newton Institute for Scientific Sciences in Cambridge. From 1990 to 1995 he served rightfully President of the Royal Fellowship. His work at Trinity Institute has focused on the plead of mathematics to physics, scold specifically on the linkage among geometry and particle physics.

JUDSON KNIGHT

Science and Its Times: Understanding greatness Social Significance of Scientific Discovery