Suzuki Michio (mathematician)

Suzuki Michio ( Japanese 鈴木 通 夫 ; born October 2, 1926 in Chiba ; † May 31, 1998 in Tokyo ) was a Japanese mathematician who dealt with the theory of finite groups.

Life

Suzuki studied at the University of Tokyo (among other things with Kenkichi Iwasawa ), where he received his doctorate in 1952 with Shoukichi Iyanaga. From 1952 he was at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , where he became a professor in 1955. From 1968 until his death he was a professor at the Center for Advanced Study there. 1956/57 he was at Harvard with Richard Brauer and 1960/61 at the University of Chicago. 1962/63, 1968/69 and 1981 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study , 1971 visiting professor in Tokyo, also in 1980 (and in Hokkaido and Osaka) and 1994 at the University of Padua.

Suzuki led the early efforts (from the 1950s onwards) to classify the finite simple groups. He was the first to tackle the important odd-order theorem of Walter Feit and John Griggs Thompson (who proved the theorem in 1962) - he proved a special case in 1954 and thus showed that the problem was vulnerable. In 1960 he discovered the Suzuki groups, an infinite family of simple finite groups that were later found to be of the Lie type . In 1968 he discovered a sporadic simple group named after him.

Suzuki was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1962/63. In 1991 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Kiel . In 1974 he received the Academy Prize of the Japanese Academy of Sciences. In 1970 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Nice ( Characterizations of some finite simple groups ).

See also

• Theorem of Brewers Suzuki

literature

• Suzuki: A new type of simple groups of finite order. Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences USA, Vol. 46, 1960, pp. 868-870.
• Suzuki: Group Theory , 2 volumes, Springer, Grundlehren der Mathematischen Wissenschaften , 1982
• Aschbacher, H. Bender, W. Feit, R. Solomon: Michio Suzuki (1926-1998). (PDF; 146 kB) Notices Amer. Math. Soc. Vol. 46, 1999, No. 5.

Web links

• John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson :  Suzuki Michio. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
• Page at the University of Illinois to Suzuki
• Literature by and about Suzuki Michio in the catalog of the German National Library

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . So Suzuki is the family name, Michio is the first name.