Robert Walker (mathematician)
Robert John Walker (born May 5, 1909 in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania , † November 25, 1992 ibid) was an American mathematician who dealt with algebraic geometry.
Walker received his doctorate in 1934 under Solomon Lefschetz at Princeton University on the resolution of singularities of algebraic surfaces. In 1950 his textbook Algebraic Curves (Princeton University Press, reprinted Springer 1978) was published, which is considered a classic in the USA. He was a professor at Cornell University from 1938 until his retirement in 1974 , where he was chairman of the mathematics faculty for ten years in the 1950s. Together with Richard Conway, he was instrumental in establishing the computer science department in Cornell in the 1960s and until 1968 was also half in the computer science faculty of the university.
In his dissertation he proved the solvability of singularities of algebraic surfaces over complex numbers. The proof of the solvability of singularities for algebraic curves over the complex numbers has been known since the 19th century. For the next higher dimension, algebraic surfaces, there was no strict evidence before Walker, only sketches of evidence by Beppo Levi (1899), Oscar Chisini (1921) and Giacomo Albanese (1924). In 1939 Oscar Zariski gave a purely algebraic proof for algebraic surfaces and curves over bodies with the characteristic 0 (which also include complex numbers). For the general case of algebraic varieties of any dimension over fields of characteristic 0, Heisuke Hironaka proved this in 1964 .
Web links
- Short biography on page of the Conway Walker Lectures at Cornell University
- Robert John Walker May 5, 1909 - November 25, 1992 on eCommons @ Cornell - Cornell University; accessed on October 19, 2018
Individual evidence
- ↑ Walker Reduction of the Singularities of an Algebraic Surface , Annals of Mathematics, 2nd Series, Vol., 1935, pp. 336-365.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Walker, Robert |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Walker, Robert John (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American mathematician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 5, 1909 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 25, 1992 |
| Place of death | Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania |