|
Prof.
Shing-Tung Yau was
born April 4, 1949 in China. When he was fourteen, he moved to
Hong Kong
with his family where, after graduating from
Pui Ching
Middle School, he studied
mathematics
at The
Chinese
University of Hong Kong from
1966
to
1969.
He undertook graduate studies at the
University
of California, Berkeley, where
his advisor was
Shiing-Shen
Chern.
He received
his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1971.
Afterwards,
he spent a post-doctoral year at the
Institute
for Advanced Study and then
another two years as an
assistant
professor at the
State
University of New York at Stony Brook.
Prof. Yau is an eminent Chinese American mathematician. He has
made fundamental contributions to differential geometry which
have uncovered deep intrinsic geometric structures in an
astonishingly wide range of scientific disciplines like
differential geometry, algebraic geometry, topology, partial
Differential equations, general relativity and string theory. In
1976 he proved Calabi's conjecture on a class of manifolds now
named Calabi-Yau manifolds, which has now become the geometric
ground where physicists build their string theory.
His revolutionary use of the methods of partial differential
equations in the area of differential geometry has had a lasting
impact on geometry. Prof. Yau is renowned as an energetic
teacher and educator. He has advised more than 50 Ph.D.
students, with many of them prominent mathematicians. Meanwhile,
Prof. Yau has received a number of awards. These include
the Oswald Veblen Prize in
Geometry (1981); the John J. Carty Award for the Advancement of
Science of the National Academy of Sciences (1981);
the
Fields Medal in 1982,
the John D.
and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship (1985); the Humboldt
Research Award (1991); the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences (1994);
the (U.S.)
National Medal of Science in
1997;
and the International Scientific and Technological Cooperation
Award of China (2003).
Prof. Yau is
currently the William Caspar Graustein Professor of Mathematics
and the Chairman of the Mathematics Department at Harvard
University. He is also the Director of The Institute of
Mathematical Sciences at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in
Hong Kong, the Morningside Center of Mathematics at Academia
Sinica in China, the Centre of Mathematical Sciences at the
Zhejiang University in China, and the Tsinghua Mathematical
Sciences Center in China. He is a Foreign Member of the National
Academy of Lincei, Italy, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and
the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the
National Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Arts and
Sciences. Prof. Yau is one of the most respected mathematicians
in the world. He received 10 honorary degrees from top
universities around the world, including Harvard, National
Taiwan University, Zhejiang University, and The Chinese
University of Hong Kong, for his seminal contributions in
differential geometry, differential equations and general
relativity.
Moreover,
Prof. Yau is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of
Differential Geometry (1980–present), Advances in
Theoretical Mathematics and Physics (1997–present),
Dynamics of Partial Differential Equations (2004–present),
Communications in Number Theory and Physics
(2007–present), and the Asian Journal of Mathematics
(1997–present).
|
