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Sir Michael Francis Atiyah OM FRS FRSE FMedSci FAA HonFREng (/ ə ˈ t iː ə /; 22 April 1929 – 11 January 2019) was a British-Lebanese mathematician specialising in geometry. His contributions include the Atiyah–Singer index theorem and co-founding topological K-theory .
- Michael Francis Atiyah, 22 April 1929, Hampstead, London, England
- Mathematics
Jan 11, 2019 · 22 April 1929. London, England. Died. 11 January 2019. Edinburgh, Scotland. Summary. Michael Atiyah worked in Topology and Geometry and was best known for his work on K-theory and the Atiyah-Singer Index Theorem. He was awarded a Fields Medal in 1966. He retired from the mastership of Trinity College Cambridge to live in Scotland.
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Jan 11, 2019 · By Julie Rehmeyer. Jan. 11, 2019. Michael Atiyah, a British mathematician who united mathematics and physics during the 1960s in a way not seen since the days of Isaac Newton, died on Friday....
Jan 15, 2019 · Sir Michael Atiyah obituary. One of the greatest British mathematicians since Isaac Newton. Ian Stewart. Tue 15 Jan 2019 10.41 EST.
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Elite mathematical research transformed in the second half of the twentieth century. Capitalizing on new opportunities for international collaboration, superstar theorists sought ambitious syntheses across intellectual domains at new heights of abstraction. At the vanguard of jet-age mathematics was Michael Francis Atiyah, who died on 11 January. Winner of the Fields Medal and the Abel Prize, and a president of the Royal Society in London, Atiyah breathed life into research sites and partnerships with an unchecked zeal for the social life of theorizing. His conversations reshaped the fields from which he drew.
Specializing in algebraic geometry and topology, the study of shapes and their transformations, Atiyah made his greatest contributions through dialogue with leading researchers who had complementary expertise. Two of his early collaborations resulted in K-theory and index theory, exemplars of his generation’s new breed of interdisciplinarity. Subsequent collaborations straddled the theoretical extremities of mathematics and physics, relating intricate symmetries to the fundamental properties of matter. Later, presiding over learned societies and institutions, he promoted the same values of cooperation and internationalism that defined his research.
Born in London in 1929 to a British artist mother and a Lebanese father who worked in the British colonial civil service, Atiyah was raised between Sudan and England before excelling at boarding school in Cairo. He emerged as a formidable young mathematician at the Manchester Grammar School and — after a brief period of national service — Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, UK. He stayed there for his doctorate under W. V. D. Hodge, a geometer active in international mathematical organizations. Hodge exposed Atiyah to a cosmopolitan panorama of emerging theories and supported his career-defining application for a Commonwealth Fund fellowship for postdoctoral research at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey.
Newly wed to mathematician Lily Brown, who gave up her position at Bedford College London to join him in Princeton, Atiyah spent 1955–56 in the exhilarating company of many of the world’s most accomplished young mathematicians. A contemporary recalled him being “everywhere, bursting with ideas”. He bounced between seminars and teas that lasted for hours. As he reported to his funders, “the innumerable conversations, carried on at all times of day” were the highlight of his fellowship. New IAS friends included Friedrich Hirzebruch, Raoul Bott and Isadore Singer, who would later become partners in his highest-profile collaborations.
In a system that rewarded networking and international collaboration, Atiyah shone brightly. Next came a lectureship at Cambridge, then a readership at the University of Oxford in 1961 that led to the Savilian Professorship of Geometry, also at Oxford, in 1963. With Hirzebruch and Bott, Atiyah developed striking algebraic methods to describe and interrelate complex contortions of multidimensional shapes.
- Michael J. Barany
- 2019
Sir Michael Francis Atiyah OM FRS FRSE FMedSci FAA HonFREng ( / əˈtiːə /; 22 April 1929 – 11 January 2019) was a British-Lebanese mathematician specialising in geometry. His contributions include the Atiyah–Singer index theorem and co-founding topological K-theory.
Apr 18, 2024 · Sir Michael Francis Atiyah, British mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1966 primarily for his work in topology. Along with American Isadore Singer, he developed the famous Atiyah-Singer index theorem, which characterizes the number of solutions for an elliptic differential equation.
