Nigel Hitchin | |
|---|---|
 Hitchin in 2016 | |
| Born | (1946-08-02)2 August 1946 (age 79) Holbrook, Derbyshire, England |
| Education | Jesus College, Oxford (BA) Wolfson College, Oxford (DPhil) |
| Known for | Higgs bundle ADHM construction Atiyah–Hitchin–Singer theorem Hitchin functional Hitchin's equations Hitchin–Thorpe inequality Kobayashi–Hitchin correspondence Nahm–Hitchin description of monopoles Generalized complex structure |
| Awards | Whitehead Prize(1981) Senior Berwick Prize(1990) Sylvester Medal(2000) Pólya Prize(2002) Shaw Prize(2016) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | University of Oxford University of Warwick University of Cambridge |
| Doctoral advisor | Brian Steer Michael Atiyah |
| Doctoral students | Simon Donaldson Oscar Garcia Prada Tamás Hausel Jacques Hurtubise[1] |
Nigel James HitchinFRS (born 2 August 1946) is a British mathematician working in the fields ofdifferential geometry,gauge theory,algebraic geometry, andmathematical physics. He is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at theUniversity of Oxford.
Hitchin attendedEcclesbourne School,Duffield, and earned hisBA in mathematics fromJesus College, Oxford, in 1968.[2] After moving toWolfson College, he received hisD.Phil. in 1972. From 1971 to 1973 he visited theInstitute for Advanced Study and 1973/74 theCourant Institute of Mathematical Sciences ofNew York University. He then was a research fellow in Oxford and starting in 1979 tutor, lecturer and fellow ofSt Catherine's College. In 1990 he became a professor at theUniversity of Warwick and in 1994 theRouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at theUniversity of Cambridge. In 1997 he was appointed to theSavilian Chair of Geometry at theUniversity of Oxford, a position he held until his retirement in 2016.
Amongst his notable discoveries are theHitchin–Thorpe inequality; Hitchin'sprojectivelyflat connection overTeichmüller space; the Atiyah–Hitchin monopole metric; theAtiyah–Hitchin–Singer theorem; theADHM construction ofinstantons (ofMichael Atiyah,Vladimir Drinfeld, Hitchin, andYuri Manin); thehyperkähler quotient (of Hitchin, Anders Karlhede,Ulf Lindström andMartin Roček);Higgs bundles, which arise as solutions to the Hitchin equations, a 2-dimensional reduction of the self-dualYang–Mills equations; and theHitchin system, an algebraicallycompletely integrable Hamiltonian system associated to the data of analgebraic curve and a complexreductive group. He andShoshichi Kobayashi independently conjectured theKobayashi–Hitchin correspondence. Higgs bundles, which are also developed in the work ofCarlos Simpson, are closely related to the Hitchin system, which has an interpretation as amoduli space of semistable Higgs bundles over a compactRiemann surface or algebraic curve.[3] This moduli space has emerged as a focal point for deep connections between algebraic geometry, differential geometry,hyperkähler geometry, mathematical physics, andrepresentation theory.
In his article[4] on generalizedCalabi–Yau manifolds, he introduced the notion ofgeneralized complex manifolds, providing a single structure that incorporates, as examples,Poisson manifolds,symplectic manifolds andcomplex manifolds. These have found wide applications as the geometries offlux compactifications instring theory and also intopological string theory.
In the span of his career, Hitchin has supervised 37 research students, includingSimon Donaldson (part-supervised with Atiyah).
Until 2013 Nigel Hitchin served as the managing editor of the journalMathematische Annalen.
In 1991 he was elected aFellow of the Royal Society.[5]
In 2003 he was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Science) from theUniversity of Bath.
Hitchin was elected as anHonorary Fellow of Jesus College in 1998,[2] and theSenior Berwick Prize (1990), theSylvester Medal (2000) and thePólya Prize (2002) have been awarded to him in honour of his far-reaching work. A conference was held in honour of his 60th birthday, in conjunction with the 2006International Congress of Mathematicians in Spain.
In 2012 he became a fellow of theAmerican Mathematical Society.[6] In 2014 he was awarded another Honorary Degree (Doctor of Science) from theUniversity of Warwick. In 2016 he received theShaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences.[7]
Savilian Professors | |
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Chairs established bySir Henry Savile | |
| Savilian Professors of Astronomy |
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| Savilian Professors of Geometry |
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