Kunio Murasugi

Kunio Murasugi ( Japanese 村 杉 邦 男 , Murasugi Kunio ; born March 25, 1929 in Tokyo Prefecture ) is a Japanese mathematician who deals with knot theory.

Murasugi attended the Tokyo Higher Normal School from 1945 to 1949 and then studied at the Bunrika University of Tokyo with a bachelor's degree under Gaisi Takeuti in 1952. Initially, he wanted to deal with the question of the homotopy groups of spheres, but then lost interest after becoming known the fundamental work of Jean-Pierre Serre on this. He then turned on the advice of Takeuti to the knot theory, about which Takeuti held a seminar in 1952/53 (based on the book by Kurt Reidemeister and Takeuti's own research, the work of the school of Ralph Fox was not yet known in Japan). First he tried that of Samuel Eilenberg andJHC Whitehead raised the problem of asphericity (disappearance of the higher homotopy groups) of knot complements (which was soon afterwards solved by Robert Aumann for alternating knots and in 1957 in general by Christos Papakyriakopoulos ). His work on alternating nodes (such as gender and the Alexander polynomial) formed the basis for his dissertation at the Tokyo University of Education (1961). Murasagi became assistant professor at Housei University in 1954, lecturer in 1956 and assistant professor in 1960. In 1960 he went to the University of Toronto, where he wanted to study the theory of infinite groups at HSM Coxeter (he had previously studied the book by Coxeter-Moser) and later wanted to continue his studies at Princeton with the knot theorist Ralph Fox. In Toronto he was research assistant to William Thomas Tutte . From 1962 to 1964 he conducted research at Princeton University . In 1964 he became Assistant Professor, 1966 Associate Professor and 1969 Professor at the University of Toronto.

In 1994 he received the Autumn Prize of the Japanese Mathematical Society .

literature

• Jozef H. Przytycki: Notes to the early history of the Knot Theory in Japan, 2001, Arxiv

Fonts

• On the genus of the alternating knot. I, II, J. Math. Soc. Japan, 10, 1958, 94-105, 235-248.
• On the Alexander polynomials of the alternating knot, Osaka Math. J., 10, 1958, 181-189.
• Knot theory and its applications, Birkhäuser 1996 (Japanese original 1993)
• with Bohdan Kurpita: A Study of Braids, Springer 1999