Person: Yano, Kentaro
Kentaro Yano was a Japanese mathematician who worked on differential geometry.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- This stuck with Kentaro so when he was in secondary school and discovered that his physics textbook had an appendix on the theory of relativity, he tried to read it.
- Kentaro immediately made the decision to study differential geometry at university.
- After completing his secondary education, Yano took the entrance examinations for the University of Tokyo in 1931.
- After completing his undergraduate studies in 1934, Yano began to undertake research in differential geometry at the University of Tokyo.
- Yano's presence almost equalled that of the librarian.
- Yano returned to Tokyo in 1938 where he worked at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
- In 1949 Yano published an English monograph Groups of Transformations in Generalized Spaces which described the work on Lie derivatives and groups of transformations which he had studied during World War II.
- Yano wanted to learn of these methods so that he could study global differential geometry rather than the local version he had been studying up to that time.
- Bochner suggested to Yano that he write up all the known results on this topic and this resulted in the joint publication of the monograph Curvature and Betti numbers published by Princeton University Press in 1953.
- While in the United States, Yano received an invitation to teach at the University of Rome and to attend the International Congress on Differential Geometry in Italy in 1953.
- In the following year Yano attended the International Congress of Mathematicians in Amsterdam in September 1954, then spent six months as a visiting professor at the the Mathematical Centre in Amsterdam.
- Yano participated in the American Mathematical Society meeting on Differential Geometry at the University of Washington in the summer of 1956.
- Although the book is self-contained it continues to develop the material treated in Yano's earlier books Curvature and Betti numbers and Theory of Lie derivatives and its applications.
- Regular visits abroad were the pattern of Yano's life.
- During a visit to the University of Illinois in 1968, Yano was able to complete work on Integral formulas in Riemannian geometry published in 1970.
- In 1970 after visiting the University of Durham, Yano went to Nice for the International Congress then visited Michigan State University for two months on his way back to Tokyo.
- In 1972 Yano retired from the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
- The book Differential geometry in honour of Kentaro Yano was published for his retirement.
- Thus it is very fitting to dedicate this volume to Professor Yano as a token of our esteem and friendship.
- Of course Yano's research did not slacken when he retired, nor did his many trips abroad.
- Yano was back in Berkeley in 1980 for the International Congress of Mathematical Education held in August of that year.
- Yano's publication record is amazing.
Born 1 March 1912, Tokyo, Japan. Died 25 December 1993, Tokyo, Japan.
View full biography at MacTutor
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Origin Japan
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
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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
