Alfred Gray (mathematician)
Alfred Gray (born October 22, 1939 in Dallas , Texas , † October 27, 1998 in Bilbao , Spain ) was an American mathematician who studied differential geometry .
Life
Gray studied mathematics at the University of Kansas and received his doctorate in 1964 from the University of California, Berkeley with Leo Sario (and Barrett O'Neill) (dissertation: Minimal varieties and Kähler submanifolds ). He married the mathematician Mary W. Gray , whom he had met while studying at the University of Kansas and who was appointed to the American University in Washington in 1968 . He spent four years as a post-graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1970 until his death he was a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park . He died of a heart attack while working with students in Bilbao.
Among other things, Gray dealt with the classification of geometrical structures such as Kahler manifolds and almost Hermitian manifolds; he introduced the concept of the Nearly Kähler Manifold. In addition, he dealt with the calculation of volumes of balls and tubes (as an extension of Hermann Weyl's theory ), about which he published a book, with curvature identities and topological obstructions for the existence of geometric structures, for example for complex structures on compact manifolds.
He was a pioneer in the use of computer graphics in the teaching of differential geometry and has published books on the teaching of differential geometry and differential equations with computer assistance ( Mathematica ).
Fonts
- Tubes , Addison-Wesley 1990, 2nd edition Birkhäuser 2004
- with Elsa Abbena, Simon Salamon Modern differential geometry of curves and surfaces with Mathematica , 3rd edition, Studies in Advanced Mathematics, Chapman and Hall, Boca Raton 2006 (first 1993)
- with Michael Mezzino, Mark A. Pinsky Introduction to ordinary differential equations with Mathematica: an integrated multimedia approach , Springer Verlag 1997
- Differential geometry: classical theory in modern representation , spectrum Akademischer Verlag 1994 (editor Hubert Gollek)
- Appendix on the use of Mathematica in Mark Pinsky Partial differential equations and boundary-value problems with applications , McGraw Hill 1991
literature
- Joseph A. Wolf , Marisa Fernández Global differential geometry: the mathematical legacy of Alfred Gray , International Congress Differential Geometry, Bilbao 2000, American Mathematical Society 2001
Web links
- Literature by and about Alfred Gray in the catalog of the German National Library
- Obituary of the UMD ( memento from June 18, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Gray, Alfred |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American mathematician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 22, 1939 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dallas |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 27, 1998 |
| Place of death | Bilbao |