Person: Hironaka, Heisuke
Heisuke Hironaka is a Japanese mathematician who won a Fields Medal in 1970 for his contributions to algebraic geometry.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Heisuke attended elementary school and then middle school where he began to develop a liking for mathematics.
- After middle school, Heisuke attended the boys' junior high school in Yanai.
- After a mathematics professor from Hiroshima University gave a lecture at the junior high school, Heisuke became enthusiastic and applied to study mathematics at Hiroshima University.
- By the time Hironaka entered Kyoto University in 1949, it had been integrated into a mass higher education system but had maintained its prestige.
- In his first year Hironaka studied physics, chemistry and biology.
- Yasuo Akizuki, a pioneer of modern algebra in Japan, was a major influence on Hironaka during his time at Kyoto.
- While at Harvard, Hironaka became friends with Alexander Grothendieck who spent the academic year 1958-59 there.
- He invited Hironaka to the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifique in Paris in 1959-60 where he found himself the only visiting fellow.
- After completing his studies at Harvard, Hironaka was appointed to the staff at Brandeis University.
- After being on the faculty at Brandeis University, Hironaka was appointed to Columbia University, and then to Harvard in 1968.
- Hironaka gave a general solution of this problem in any dimension in 1964 in Resolution of singularities of an algebraic variety over a field of characteristic zero.
- Hironaka talked about his solution in his lecture On resolution of singularities (characteristic zero) to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Stockholm in 1962.
- In 1975 Hironaka returned to Japan where he was appointed a professor in the Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences of Kyoto University.
- Throughout this book one recognizes again the importance of the preparation theorem, and one finds good introductions to the study of the advanced theory of Stein spaces, the works of A Douady, and the theory of the resolution of singularities, to which Hironaka has contributed deeply.
- Hironaka was Director of the Research Institute in Kyoto from 1983 to 1985, retiring in 1991 when he was made Professor Emeritus.
- Hironaka was invited to give one of the featured lectures on recent research advances and he spoke on Resolution of Singularities in Algebraic Geometry.
Born 9 April 1931, Yamaguchi, Japan.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Prize Fields Medal, Origin Japan
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References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
