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Michael Francis Atiyah (Londra, 22 aprile 1929 – Edimburgo, 11 gennaio 2019) è stato un matematico britannico, noto per i suoi numerosi contributi alla geometria. È cresciuto in Sudan e in Egitto, ma ha trascorso gran parte della sua carriera accademica a Oxford, Cambridge e Princeton.
A comprehensive biography of Michael Atiyah, a British-Lebanese mathematician who won the Fields Medal and the Abel Prize for his contributions to geometry and topology. Learn about his life, education, career, research, awards, and legacy.
Learn about the life and achievements of Michael Atiyah, a renowned mathematician who worked in topology and geometry and won the Fields Medal in 1966. Explore his early years in Khartoum and Lebanon, his education at Cambridge, his research on K-theory and the Atiyah-Singer Index Theorem, and his later career in Scotland.
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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.
A tribute to the mathematician who transformed algebraic geometry and topology, and bridged mathematics and physics. Learn about his life, achievements, collaborations and legacy in this comprehensive article.
- Michael J. Barany
- 2019
2 set 2020 · Michael Atiyah was the dominant figure in UK mathematics in the latter half of the twentieth century. He made outstanding contributions to geometry, topology, global analysis and, particularly over the last 30 years, to theoretical physics.
- Nigel Hitchin
- 2020
5 ago 2021 · Sir Michael Atiyah (1929–2019) was a giant figure in twentieth century math-ematics. His publications, beginning in 1952, span nearly 70 years and he made fundamental contributions to the development of many fields, both directly through his own work and through his wider influence, inspiration, and leadership.
12 gen 2019 · Michael Francis Atiyah (Londra, 1929- 2019), matematico, ha insegnato a Oxford e Princeton e svolto studi in algebra, geometria e topologia. Nel ’66 ha vinto la prestigiosa Medaglia Fields
