Sir Christopher Zeeman | |
|---|---|
 Zeeman (in foreground) in 1980 | |
| Born | Erik Christopher Zeeman (1925-02-04)4 February 1925 Japan |
| Died | 13 February 2016(2016-02-13) (aged 91) Woodstock, England |
| Citizenship | British |
| Alma mater | Christ's College, Cambridge |
| Known for | Catastrophe theory Geometric topology Singularity theory Zeeman conjecture Zeeman's comparison theorem Stallings–Zeeman theorem |
| Awards | Senior Whitehead Prize (1982) Faraday Medal (1988) David Crighton Medal (2006) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | University of Cambridge University of Warwick University of Oxford Gresham College |
| Thesis | Dihomology (1955) |
| Doctoral advisor | Shaun Wylie |
| Doctoral students | Peter Buneman David Epstein Jenny Harrison Ray Lickorish Tim Poston Colin Rourke David Trotman Terry Wall Charlotte Watts |
| Notes | |
Sir Erik Christopher ZeemanFRS[1] (4 February 1925 – 13 February 2016), was a British mathematician,[2] known for his work ingeometric topology andsingularity theory.
Zeeman's main contributions to mathematics were intopology, particularly inknot theory, thepiecewise linear category, anddynamical systems.
His 1955 thesis at theUniversity of Cambridge described a new theory termed "dihomology", an algebraic structure associated to atopological space, containing bothhomology andcohomology, introducing what is now known as the Zeemanspectral sequence. This was studied by Clint McCrory in his 1972 Brandeis thesis following a suggestion ofDennis Sullivan that one make "a general study of the Zeemanspectral sequence to see how singularities in a space perturbPoincaré duality". This in turn led to the discovery ofintersection homology byRobert MacPherson andMark Goresky atBrown University where McCrory was appointed in 1974.
From 1976 to 1977 he was theDonegall Lecturer in Mathematics atTrinity College Dublin.
Zeeman is known among the wider scientific public for his contribution to, and spreading awareness ofcatastrophe theory, which was due initially to another topologist,René Thom, and for his Christmas lectures about mathematics on television in 1978. He was especially active in encouraging the application of mathematics, and catastrophe theory in particular, to biology and behavioural sciences.
Zeeman was born in Japan to a Danish father, Christian Zeeman, and a British mother. They moved to England one year after his birth. After being educated atChrist's Hospital inHorsham, West Sussex, he served as aFlying Officer with theRoyal Air Force from 1943 to 1947.[2] He studied mathematics atChrist's College, Cambridge, but had forgotten much of his school mathematics while serving in the Air Force. He received anMA and PhD (the latter under the supervision ofShaun Wylie) from the University of Cambridge, and became a Fellow ofGonville and Caius College where he tutoredDavid Fowler andJohn Horton Conway.[3]
Zeeman is one of the founders of engulfing theory in piecewise linear topology and is credited with working out the engulfing theorem (independently also worked out by John Stallings), which can be used to prove the piecewise linear version of thePoincaré conjecture for all dimensions above four.[4][5]
After working atCambridge (during which he spent a year abroad atUniversity of Chicago andPrinceton as aHarkness Fellow) and theInstitut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, he founded the Mathematics Department and Mathematics Research Centre at the newUniversity of Warwick in 1964. In his own words
Zeeman's style of leadership was informal, but inspirational, and he rapidly took Warwick to international recognition for the quality of its mathematical research. The first six appointments he made were all in topology, enabling the department to immediately become internationally competitive, followed by six in algebra, and finally six in analysis and six in applied mathematics. He was able to trade four academic appointments for funding that enabled PhD students to give undergraduate supervision in groups of two for the first two years, in a manner similar to the tutorial system at Oxford and Cambridge. He remained at Warwick until 1988, but from 1966 to 1967 he was a visiting professor at theUniversity of California at Berkeley, after which his research turned to dynamical systems, inspired by many of the world leaders in this field, includingStephen Smale andRené Thom, who both spent time at Warwick. In 1963, Zeeman showed that causality in special relativity expressed by the preservation of partial ordering is given exactly and only by theLorentz transforms.[7] Zeeman subsequently spent a sabbatical with Thom at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in Paris, where he became interested incatastrophe theory. On his return to Warwick, he taught an undergraduate course in Catastrophe Theory that became immensely popular with students; his lectures generally were "standing room only". In 1973 he gave an MSc course at Warwick giving a complete detailed proof of Thom's classification of elementary catastrophes, mainly following an unpublished manuscript, "Right-equivalence" written byJohn Mather at Warwick in 1969.David Trotman wrote up his notes of the course as an MSc thesis. These were then distributed in thousands of copies throughout the world and published both in the proceedings of a 1975 Seattle conference on catastrophe theory and its applications,[8] and in a 1977 collection of papers on catastrophe theory by Zeeman.[9] In 1974 Zeeman gave aninvited address at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Vancouver, about applications of catastrophe theory.
Zeeman was elected as aFellow of the Royal Society in 1975, and was awarded the Society's Faraday Medal in 1988. He was the 63rd President of theLondon Mathematical Society in 1986–88 giving his Presidential Address on 18 November 1988On the classification of dynamical systems. He was awarded theSenior Whitehead Prize of the Society in 1982. He was the Society's first Forder lecturer, involving a lecture tour in New Zealand, in 1987. Between 1988 and 1994 he was theProfessor of Geometry atGresham College.[10]
In 1978, Zeeman gave the televised series ofChristmas Lectures at the Royal Institution.[11] From these grew the Mathematics and Engineering Masterclasses for both primary and secondary school children that now flourish in forty centers in the United Kingdom.[12]
In 1988, Zeeman became Principal ofHertford College, Oxford. The following year he was appointed an honorary fellow ofChrist's College, Cambridge. He received aknighthood in the1991 Birthday Honours for "mathematical excellence and service to British mathematics and mathematics education".[13][14] He was invited to become President ofThe Mathematical Association in 2003 and based his bookThree-dimensional Theorems for Schools on his 2004 Presidential Address. On Friday 6 May 2005, the University of Warwick's new Mathematics and Statistics building was named the Zeeman Building in his honour. He became an Honorary Member ofThe Mathematical Association in 2006. In September 2006, theLondon Mathematical Society and theInstitute of Mathematics and its Applications awarded him theDavid Crighton medal in recognition of his long and distinguished service to mathematics and the mathematical community.[15] The medal is awarded triennially, and Zeeman was the second-ever recipient of the award.[16] He died on 13 February 2016.[17]
TheChristopher Zeeman Medal for Communication of Mathematics [Wikidata][18] of theLondon Mathematical Society and theInstitute of Mathematics and its Applications is named in Zeeman's honour. The award aims "to honour mathematicians who have excelled in promoting mathematics and engaging with the general public. They may be academic mathematicians based in universities, mathematics school teachers, industrial mathematicians, those working in the financial sector or indeed mathematicians from any number of other fields".
| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Principal ofHertford College, Oxford 1988–1996 | Succeeded by |
