Paul A. Schweitzer

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Paul Alexander Schweitzer , SJ , (born July 21, 1937 in Yonkers , New York ) is an American-Brazilian mathematician who studies algebraic topology , geometric topology and differential topology.

life and work

Schweitzer studied at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester (Massachusetts) with a Master of Arts degree in 1958 and received his doctorate in 1962 from Princeton University with Norman Steenrod ( Secondary cohomology operations induced by the diagonal mapping ). He then earned a degree (Phil. L.) in philosophy from Weston College (1966) and a bachelor's degree in theology (B. Div.) From the Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1970) and became a Catholic in 1970 Ordained priest. He has been a member of the Jesuits since 1963. August 1971 he became a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro , with a full professorship since 1980.

He has also been visiting professor at the University of Notre Dame , Fairfield University , Northwestern University , Boston College, Harvard University and the University of Strasbourg . In 1970/71 and 1981/82 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study .

Among other things, he deals with scrolling , knot theory and 3-manifolds. He refuted Herbert Seifert's assumption that every leaf of the 3-sphere with codimension 2 has a compact leaf (in this case a circle) (for the case of leafing). While for a series of closed 3-manifolds the existence of compact leaves for codimension-1 leafings could be proven (for example by Sergei Nowikow for ), Schweitzer showed that this is no longer the case in more than three dimensions. In this case every smooth, closed manifold (with vanishing Euler characteristics ) has a codimension 1 foliation (of the type ) without compact leaves.

Since 1978 he was on the board of directors of the Brazilian Mathematical Society.

He is a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society (AMS). He was invited speaker at the 1974 International Congress of Mathematicians in Vancouver ( Compact leaves of foliations ).

Fonts

  • Counterexamples to the Seifert conjecture and opening closed leaves of foliations , Annals of Mathematics, 100, 1974, pp. 386-400
  • Codimension 1 foliations without compact leaves , Comm. Math. Helveticae, 70, 1995, pp. 171-209

literature

  • Nicolau C. Saldanha (editor) Foliations, geometry, and topology: Paul Schweitzer festschrift: conference in honor of the 70th birthday of Paul Schweitzer, SJ, August 6–10, 2007, PUC-Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil , AMS 2009

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paul A. Schweitzer in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)Template: MathGenealogyProject / Maintenance / id used
personal data
SURNAME Schweitzer, Paul A.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schweitzer, Paul Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH July 21, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Yonkers , New York