Person: Schoen, Richard Melvin
Richard Schoen is an American mathematician known for his work in differential geometry and geometric analysis.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- His parents were Arnold Peter Schoen and Rosemary Heitkamp.
- Schoen left Stanford in 1976 to take up the position of Instructor in Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley.
- It was in Berkeley that Schoen met Doris Helga Fischer-Colbrie.
- She had been a Teaching Assistant at Berkeley while working for her doctorate advised by Blaine Lawson but, when Schoen arrived in Berkeley, she was a Research Assistant.
- Schoen spent two years as an Instructor at Berkeley, then in 1978 he took up an appointment as an Assistant professor at New York University.
- As indicated by this quote, Schoen was a Visiting Member at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, during 1979-80, a visit that was funded by a Sloan Postdoctoral Fellowship.
- In the early eighties, Schoen brought the Positive Mass Theorem to bear on the resolution of the famous Yamabe problem, providing more evidence to support the development of the mathematical theory of the constraint equations, and inspiring many others to do so.
- In 1980 Schoen returned to the University of California, Berkeley, when he was appointed as Professor.
- During these seven years, Schoen was invited to address the International Congress of Mathematicians twice.
- The solution of the Yamabe problem on compact manifolds, which Schoen discussed in this lecture, is one of his greatest achievements.
- Schoen's ideas have been applied to a wide range of mathematical problems, from general relativity to questions about rigidity for lattice subgroups of algebraic groups.
- We must not give the impression that Schoen's major research contributions stopped in the 1990s.
- In addition to the visiting positions which we mentioned above, Schoen was a Visiting Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, in the Spring of 1984, a Visiting Professor at the Courant Institute, New York University in academic year 1989-90, Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, in academic year 1992-93, and a Visiting Professor at Harvard University in the autumn of 1999.
- Schoen has published two important books, both in collaboration with Shing-Tung Yau, which were based on lecture courses.
- Other important contributions to mathematics by Schoen include his editorial work.
- Few lecturers receive such praise from their undergraduate students as Schoen does.
Born 23 October 1950, Celina, Ohio, USA.
View full biography at MacTutor
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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
