Category: Obituaries

A week ago Sergei Novikov passed away. He was a notable mathematician working in topology. The conjecture he posed in 1965 about the homotopy invariance of higher signatures of manifolds is one of the most important unsolved problem about the topology of manifolds. An obituary (in Russian) may be found here: link.

Three days ago Jim Simons passed away. He was a great mathematician (the Chern-Simons form is named after him together with Shiing-Shen Chern) and the most successful hedge fund manager of all time (citation from wikipedia). Together with his wife he founded the Simons Foundation whose mission is to advance the frontiers of research in … Continue reading "Jim Simons 1938 – 2024"

Sir Michael Atiyah died three days ago on January 11th, 2019 (news of The Royal Society). A nice obituary (together with one for Jean Bourgain) may be found on this blog: link. Here is another obituary by the New York Times.

Thomas Friedrich was a German mathematian working in differential geometry and global analysis. He passed away in February 2018. Thomas Friedrich contributed substantially to the development of Berlin mathematics, he was Editor-in-Chief of the journal Annals of Global Analysis and Geometry for more than three decades (and also one of the founding editors-in-chief), and in 2003 he received the … Continue reading "Thomas Friedrich 1949 – 2018"

Manfredo do Carmo was a Brazilian mathematician working in differential geometry. 1978 he was an invited speaker at the ICM in Helsinki, and 1971-1973 he was president of the Brazilian Mathematical Society. Besides for his mathematical research he was also known for his textbooks.

John Roe, the founder of coarse index theory, passed away last month after a long fight against cancer. His web page is still online ( http://sites.psu.edu/johnroe/ ) and can be visited to get a glimpse not only of his mathematical work, but also of his personal life and all the things in the world that … Continue reading "John Roe 1959-2018"