Nigel Hitchin

Nigel James Hitchin (born August 2, 1946 in Holbrook , Derbyshire , England) is an English mathematician who studied differential geometry , algebraic geometry and mathematical physics .

Hitchin 2016

Live and act

Nigel Hitchin studied from 1965 at Jesus College in Oxford , where he made his bachelor's degree in 1968. In 1969 he received his diploma at the Wolfson College of the University of Oxford , where he in 1972 Michael Atiyah received his doctorate. From 1971 to 1973 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study and 1973/74 at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University . He was then a Research Fellow at Oxford and from 1979 tutor, lecturer and fellow at St Catherine's College in Oxford . In 1990 he became a professor at the University of Warwick and from 1994 Rouse Ball professor at Cambridge and a fellow at Gonville and Caius College . Since 1997 he has been Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford (succeeding Atiyah) and Fellow of New College, Oxford .

For example, Hitchin worked on the connection between integrable systems of mathematical physics and algebraic geometry, for example in the Atiyah-Drinfeld-Hitchin-Manin construction (ADHM construction) of instantons from 1977 with Atiyah, Yuri Manin , Vladimir Drinfeld ( The construction of instantons . Physics Letters A, vol. 65, 1978, pp 185-187).

In 1974 he published the Hitchin-Thorpe inequality between the Euler characteristic and the signature of a manifold that four-dimensional (smooth, compact) manifolds that carry an Einstein metric must satisfy: in the case of equality, he showed that a flat torus, a Calabi -Yau manifold or a quotient of both. ${\ displaystyle \ chi (M)}$ ${\ displaystyle \ tau (M)}$ ${\ displaystyle M}$ ${\ displaystyle \ chi (M) \ geq {\ frac {3} {2}} | \ tau (M) |,}$ ${\ displaystyle M}$

In 1998 he became an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. In 1991 he was elected to the Royal Society , which awarded him the New Year's Eve Medal in 2000 . From 1994 to 1996 he was President of the London Mathematical Society , from which he received the Whitehead Prize in 1981 , the Senior Berwick Prize in 1990 and the Pólya Prize in 2002 . In 2016 he was awarded the Shaw Prize . Since 1993 he has been a member of the Academia Europaea .

Nigel Hitchin is editor of the journal Mathematische Annalen .

His students include Simon Donaldson (whom he mentored with Atiyah), Jacques Hurtubise and Simon Salamon .

Hitchin (center) with Karen Uhlenbeck (right) at IHES 2007

In 1983 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Warsaw ( The geometry of monopoles ). In 2018 he was on the Fields Medal Award Committee .

Fonts

Monopoles, minimal surfaces and algebraic curves. Montreal 1987.
with Graeme Segal , Richard S. Ward : Integrable systems: Twistors, Loop Groups and Riemann surfaces. Oxford 1999.
Global Differential geometry , in Björn Engquist, Wilfried Schmid (editor) Mathematics unlimited , Springer 2001

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ Hitchin On compact four-dimensional Einstein manifolds , J. Diff. Geom. 9 (1974) pp. 435-442, 1969 previously heard of John A. Thorpe found

personal data
SURNAME	Hitchin, Nigel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Hitchin, Nigel James
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	British mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH	August 2, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH	Holbrook , Derbyshire, England, UK

[1] Hitchin On compact four-dimensional Einstein manifolds , J. Diff. Geom. 9 (1974) pp. 435-442, 1969 previously heard of John A. Thorpe found