Bertram Kostant

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Bertram Kostant at the workshop “Enveloping Algebras and Geometric Representation Theory” in Oberwolfach , 2009

Bertram Kostant (born May 24, 1928 in Brooklyn , New York, † February 2, 2017 in Roslindale , Boston) was an American mathematician who studied Lie groups , Lie algebras , representation theory , homogeneous spaces , differential geometry (symplectic Geometry, symmetrical spaces) and mathematical physics (e.g. Toda grids).

life and work

Kostant went to school in New York City , where he graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1945. From 1950 he studied at Purdue University , received his master's degree from the University of Chicago in 1951 and received his doctorate there in 1954 under Irving Segal with the dissertation Representations of a Lie Algebra and its Enveloping Algebra on Hilbert Space . From 1953 to 1955 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study (and 1966/67), then a lecturer at Princeton University and from 1956 assistant professor at Berkeley , where he became an associate professor in 1961 and a professor in 1962. In 1961 he became a Sloan Research Fellow . From 1962 he was a professor at MIT , where he retired in 1993.

He became known, for example, for his contributions to the theory of geometric quantization (pre-quantization), which Jean-Marie Souriau developed around the same time . He also developed the theory using the Toda grids as an example.

In 1978 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences . He was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1962 . In 1970 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Nice ( Orbits and quantization theory ). For 2016 he was awarded the Wigner Medal . He was a fellow of the American Mathematical Society .

His PhD students include James Lepowsky , Moss Sweedler and David Vogan .

His collected essays will be published by Springer starting in 2008.

literature

  • Constant: Quantization and Unit Representations. In Taarn (Ed.): Lectures in Modern Analysis and Applications III. Lecture Notes in Mathematics Vol. 170, Springer-Verlag 1970.
  • Jean-Luc Brylinski (Ed.): Lie Theory and Geometry - in Honor of Bertram Kostant. Birkhäuser 1994.
  • Interview in Joel Segel (Ed.), Recountings, Conversations with MIT mathematicians, AK Peters 2009

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bertram Kostant, professor emeritus of mathematics, dies at 88. In: MIT News. February 16, 2017, accessed February 20, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Constant, Bertram
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH May 24, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn , New York
DATE OF DEATH 2nd February 2017
Place of death Roslindale , Boston