Michael Artin | |
|---|---|
 Michael Artin in 1999 | |
| Born | (1934-06-28)28 June 1934 (age 90) Hamburg, Germany |
| Nationality | German-American |
| Education | Princeton University (BA) Harvard University (PhD) |
| Known for | Artin approximation theorem Algebraic Spaces |
| Awards | Harvard Centennial Medal (2005) Steele Prize (2002) Wolf Prize (2013) National Medal of Science (2013) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Algebraic geometry Noncommutative algebra |
| Institutions | MIT |
| Thesis | On Enriques' Surfaces (1960) |
| Doctoral advisor | Oscar Zariski |
| Doctoral students | Eric Friedlander David Harbater Zinovy Reichstein Amnon Yekutieli |
Michael Artin (German:[ˈaʁtiːn]; born 28 June 1934) is an Americanmathematician and a professor emeritus in theMassachusetts Institute of Technology Mathematics Department, known for his contributions toalgebraic geometry.[1][2]
Artin was born inHamburg, Germany, and brought up inIndiana. His parents wereNatalia Naumovna Jasny (Natascha) andEmil Artin, preeminent algebraist of the 20th century ofArmenian descent. Artin's parents left Germany in 1937, because his mother's father wasJewish.[3] His elder sister isKarin Tate, who was married to mathematicianJohn Tate until the late 1980s.
Artin did his undergraduate studies atPrinceton University, receiving an A.B. in 1955. He then moved toHarvard University, where he received a Ph.D. in 1960 under the supervision ofOscar Zariski, defending a thesis aboutEnriques surfaces.[1][4]
In the early 1960s, Artin spent time at theIHÉS in France, contributing to theSGA4 volumes of theSéminaire de géométrie algébrique, ontopos theory andétale cohomology, jointly withAlexander Grothendieck. He also collaborated withBarry Mazur to defineétale homotopy theory which has become an important tool in algebraic geometry, and applied ideas from algebraic geometry (such as theNash approximation) to the study ofdiffeomorphisms ofcompact manifolds.
His work on the problem of characterising therepresentable functors in thecategory of schemes has led to theArtin approximation theorem inlocal algebra as well as the "Existence theorem". This work also gave rise to the ideas of analgebraic space andalgebraic stack, and has proved very influential inmoduli theory.
He also has made important contributions to thedeformation theory of algebraic varieties, serving as the basis for all future work in this area of algebraic geometry. WithPeter Swinnerton-Dyer, he provided a resolution of the Shafarevich-Tate conjecture for ellipticK3 surfaces and the pencil of elliptic curves over finite fields.
He contributed to the theory of surface singularities which are both fundamental and seminal. Therational singularity and fundamental cycles, which are used in matroid theory, are such examples of his sheer originality and thinking.
He began to turn his interest fromalgebraic geometry tononcommutative algebra (noncommutative ring theory), especially geometric aspects, after a talk byShimshon Amitsur and an encounter inUniversity of Chicago withClaudio Procesi and Lance W. Small, "which prompted [his] first foray into ring theory".[5] Today, he is a recognized world authority innoncommutative algebraic geometry.
In 2002, Artin won theAmerican Mathematical Society's annualSteele Prize for Lifetime Achievement.
In 2005, he was awarded theHarvard Centennial Medal.
In 2013, he won theWolf Prize in Mathematics, and in 2015 was awarded theNational Medal of Science from the PresidentBarack Obama.
He is also a member of theNational Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences (1969),[6] theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science, theSociety for Industrial and Applied Mathematics,[1] and theAmerican Mathematical Society.[7]
He is a Foreign Member of theRoyal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and Honorary Fellow of theMoscow Mathematical Society, and was awarded honorary doctorates from the universities of Hamburg andAntwerp,Belgium. He was invited to give a talk on the topic "The Étale Topology of Schemes" at theInternational Congress of Mathematicians in 1966 inMoscow,USSR.
