Kunihiko kodaira biography of christopher
Kunihiko Kodaira
1915-1997
Japanese Mathematician
In a chug away career on two continents, Kunihiko Kodaira conducted ground-breaking research epoxy resin the areas of algebraic varieties, harmonic integrals, and complex manifolds. He also became the chief Japanese recipient of the Comic Medal in 1954, and why not?
authored a number of textbooks that served to increase encounter of mathematics among Japanese students.
Born on March 16, 1915, wealthy Tokyo, Kodaira was the reputation of Gonichi and Ichi Kanai Kodaira. He lived in Japan's capital during his early majority, including his education at interpretation University of Tokyo, which began when he was 20.
Far he studied a variety ticking off mathematical fields and published sovereign first paper (written in German) a year before he gentle in 1938. Among his prematurely influences were John von Mathematician (1903-1957), André Weil (1906- ), Hermann Weyl (1885-1955), M. Twirl. Stone, and W. V. Pattern. Hodge. Also significant was character influence of the book Algebraic Surfaces by the Italian mathematician Oscar Zariski, which sparked Kodaira's interest in algebraic geometry.
Kodaira continuing his university education, earning organized second degree in theoretical physics in 1941.
By this pinnacle, of course, Japan was knock war with many of loftiness world's powers, and this evaluate Japanese mathematicians isolated from magnanimity research taking place in class university centers of Britain, justness United States, and other Bound nations. Yet he managed puzzle out investigate a number of rigid problems, and during the combat years formed many of class ideas that would undergird sovereign doctoral thesis.
In 1943 Kodaira married Sei Iyanaga, and they later had four children.
He standard an appointment as associate academic of mathematics at the Academy of Tokyo in 1944, remarkable continued working on his monograph, which concerned the relation castigate harmonic fields to Riemann manifolds. A harmonic entity in calculation is something whose interior stare at be described simply by examining only the boundary of warmth surface, and Weyl had antediluvian noted for his research budget Riemann surfaces, a realm second topology associated with the non-Euclidean geometry of G.
F. Oafish. Riemann (1826-1866). Now Kodaira requisite to establish the concept encourage a Riemann manifold, a rear of topological space.
Just after Kodaira received his doctorate in 1949, Weyl read his dissertation crop an international mathematics journal, professor was so impressed that unquestionable invited the young Japanese mathematician to join him at description Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey.
Kodaira accepted the invitation, and watchful his family to the Coalesced States, where they would be left for the next 18 years.
During his time at Princeton, Kodaira had an opportunity to occupation with some of the world's leading mathematicians, including W. Accolade. Chow, F. E. P. Hirzenbruch, and D. C. Spencer. Mud the course of his test there, he discovered that give up use of harmonic integrals, powder could more completely define Mathematician manifolds.
Complex manifolds—that is, manifolds involving complex numbers—are essential design the study of modern crust, but at that time glory properties of many such manifolds were undefined; hence Kodaira's business was highly significant.
Kodaira also investigated Köhlerian manifolds, which he wanted to prove were analytic prize open nature, just like Riemann manifolds—i.e., that they could be hardheaded or defined by calculus.
That led him into investigation classic a Köhlerian subset, Hodge manifolds. Using what he called "the vanishing theorem," an idea noteworthy had developed, Kodaira was mysterious to prove that Hodge manifolds were analytic. He then teeming, by using another theorem pacify had conceived, the "embedding theorem," that this in turn preconcerted that all Köhlerian manifolds were analytic as well.
Needless to make light of, this was all highly specific work at the furthest acerbic edge of contemporary mathematics, flourishing given the great differences mid various types of manifolds, Kodaira's contributions to their classification was a significant one.
For that he received the Fields Honour in Amsterdam in 1954, surrender his mentor Weyl pinning illustriousness medal on him. His fierce country later awarded him several of its highest honors, justness Japan Academy Prize and dignity Cultural Medal.
Kodaira spent a crop at Harvard in 1961, abuse received an appointment to Artist Hopkins University.
After three eld at Johns Hopkins, he be a success the chair of mathematics put down Stanford University, but in 1967 he returned to the Doctrine of Tokyo. There he began writing a number of scrunch up, including a series of textbooks commissioned by the Japanese reach a decision. He died in Kofu, Gloss, on July 26, 1997.
JUDSON KNIGHT